There are a number of risks associated with the use of software for hard drive erasing and ‘cleaning’ especially when companies want to dispose of their old hard drives for recycling purposes. Below are some of the risk factors associated with hard drive erasure:
- Regardless of how sophisticated the software program is for hard drive erasing, not all data can be erased on a hard drive disk due to bad sectors. Bad sectors prevent software from erasing over them and no hard drive disk is 100% error free. In fact, as hard drives age, they develop faults and data degradation where corruption occurs. This means that there is no 100% guarantee that data can be fully removed from a disk using software only.
- Software erasure doesn’t prevent state actors or other government agencies from being able to re-access old data. The data is merely written over with a new layer of information. There is no physical removal or destruction of the original information. A major risk for security companies and agencies that want to replace their older systems.
- Software erasing leaves companies liable to damages due to data breaches and data theft, which can occur during the disposal process of older systems which have been erased only with software.
- Software erasure can’t be used on damaged hard drives that have failed or get corrupted. This leaves all the original data on the volume.
For software erasure, there are clear advantages and disadvantages which we go in-depth in this analysis, however for most companies wanting to securely remove data, degaussing is an essential must for total compliance on data protection and disposal.
So how does degaussing offer a better alternative and why should you consider investing in a degausser? Take a look at some of the benefits of a degausser and how they can be used in your enterprise. Degaussing is the ultimate insurance policy for your data needs, guaranteeing 100% the destruction of your data in all circumstances, and if you are interested in exploring our degausser machines, you can see our automatic, manual and NSA approved degaussers for total security.