Millions of hard drives are destroyed every year under the guise of securing their contents so they don’t fall into the wrong hands. The intention is certainly laudable, but according to Jonmichael Hands, treasurer of the Circular Drive Initiative (CDI), it is not only unnecessary, but also very bad for the environment.
The CDI is “a partnership of global leaders in digital storage, data centers, sustainability and blockchain working together to reduce electronic waste by promoting the safe reuse of storage material”. Everyone agrees that platter hard drives will soon be gone.
So, for example, to enjoy Starfield, you will have to invest in an SSD. This does not mean, however, that perfectly working HDDs should be discarded. However, this is what many data centers around the world do, which, for security reasons, shred their hard drives. when they are out of warranty.
Data centers destroy millions of hard drives when it is useless and polluting
According to a material destruction company, a large client entrusts them with no less than 5 million hard drives every year. What are the reasons for such a mess? According to Hands, “The cloud service providers we talk to talk about security, but what they really mean is risk management. […] They have one zero risk policy. There can’t be one leak in a million records, one in 10 million records, one in 100 million records. The risk should be zero.
To read – Second-hand hard drives are full of personal data, a boon for hackers
However, shredding hard drives is no guarantee against data theft. According to Mr. Hands, “a skilled person can recover data from a piece of 3mm platter”. The message sent by CDI is therefore clear: don’t get rid of your hard drives. If you wish to resell or transfer them, use the data purging techniques recommended by the CDI.
Source : BBC News
