Paper shredders are very important. But what about a hard disk shredder?

Yes, there are tools for erasing (”Scrubbing,” “degaussing”) hard disks so that no-one can read the old contents and the disks can be reused.

But let’s face it. Older hard disks are pretty puny compared with today’s low cost one terabyte (1,000GB) drives. Old drives are just not useful, and the cost in IT man-hours for setting up and running the scrubbing software can be pretty high.

A more basic and cost-effective solution: Throw the drives into an over-sized shredding machine. (Check out this video to see an example.)

Hard disk shredding is performed by a number of services around the country. The cost is pretty good: one company, for example, quotes $7 per drive, with $4 per drive if you send over 100. You can ship the drives yourself, or, if you need tight security, you can arrange for a secure door-to-door delivery.   Some companies will even bring the hungry monster to your site.

Here’s where to start looking.

Tags: hard drives, shredders