Data Security

When equipment is collected, the owner may want the data which is written on the hard drives to be disposed of. This operation can be carried out either on the collection site or on the recycling site. Even if the owner does not specifically request the data disposal, in numerous countries, the recycling centre is legally obliged to do it, in compliance with regulations on private and intellectual property. The company may communicate about the reliability of its data disposal methods, to reassure the equipment suppliers.

To remove data from a computer, the recycling centre carries out several hard drive formattings, either at the hard drive test bench, or directly on the computer. There are various software programmes on the market enabling the retrieval of data erased from the computer by the user or during the formatting. Therefore, the recycling centre must be equipped with efficient data disposal and formatting tools, and must repeat the operation several times on each hard drive to make sure that no trace of former information remains on the hard drive. There are several data disposal software products available on the market, among which the free software Root Boot, under Linux.

If hard drives are pierced to secure the data disposal, this operation should be carried out under an aspirator, as the smoke resulting from it may contain harmful substances.