Secure PC REUSE

Worried about your sensitive data?

We treat every donated drive as though it holds sensitive information, because it might. Drives are triaged as soon as they are dropped off, then either securely erased using industry-standard methods or physically shredded. Working drives are held in locked storage until they are needed for a refurbished computer. Any drive we can’t securely erase is taken apart, and the parts that hold data are shredded on-site. The remaining e-waste goes to EPRA for recycling.

Below is the equipment we use at each step and the standards behind it.

Our process, start to finish

1. Triage at drop-off. Every drive is triaged as soon as it is dropped off.
2. Sorted by type. SATA hard drives, SATA SSDs and NVMe drives each get the erase method built for that media.
3. Sanitized. Drives are erased with industrial wiping equipment (details below).
4. Locked storage. Erased drives are segregated and locked away until one is needed for a computer.
5. Shredded if it can’t be erased. A drive that fails to erase is taken apart, and the parts that hold data are shredded in-house.
6. Recycled. What we can’t reuse goes to EPRA for responsible recycling.

SATA hard drives and SSDs

SATA drives are erased on a 45Drives Destroyinator, a purpose-built 30-bay sanitization system that erases many drives in parallel. It runs KillDisk Industrial from LSoft Technologies of Mississauga, Ontario, which supports U.S. DoD 5220.22-M and more than 20 other international erasure standards.

We use different methods because the media works differently. Overwriting suits a hard drive’s magnetic platters. An SSD’s controller can remap and hide blocks that overwriting never touches, so we use Secure Erase, a command built into the drive’s firmware to erase the whole drive.

NVMe drives

NVMe drives are erased on a MediaClone SuperCopier using the NVMe Sanitize command. Sanitize is built into the drive’s own firmware, so the drive itself erases every area of its flash storage, including blocks that ordinary software can’t reach. MediaClone documents its erase protocols, including Sanitize and NVMe Format, as NIST 800-88 approved.

Physical destruction

Any drive that fails to erase is destroyed in-house on an Ameri-Shred AMS-150HD-SSD, an industrial shredder with two sides: a hard drive side and an SSD side.

A failed hard drive is taken apart, and its platters (the spinning disks inside, and the only part that holds data) go through the hard drive side. Solid-state drives, NVMe drives, circuit boards and loose memory chips go through the SSD side, which cuts them into strips 3/8 inch (about 9.5 mm) wide, small enough to break up the flash memory chips inside. Anything that holds memory and can’t be securely erased goes through at least one of the two sides, and a shredded drive can never be put back into service.

Erasure certificates

Need proof of erasure for your records? Certificates are available on request: $5 per hard drive or SSD wipe, and $7.50 for devices we need to pull apart, such as Chromebooks or soldered storage.

Standards behind the equipment

The equipment we use is documented by its manufacturers against recognized media sanitization standards, including NIST SP 800-88, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s guidelines for media sanitization. Retiring IT equipment safely also helps organizations meet their duty to protect personal information under laws such as PIPEDA.

Does your organization need a specific standard or documentation? Contact us and we’ll talk it through.

Responsible recycling

Shredded drives and the e-waste we can’t reuse go to EPRA, the Electronic Products Recycling Association. EPRA works only with recyclers verified under the national Electronics Recycling Standard, which prohibits exporting electronics to non-OECD countries.