Should You Reuse Hard Drives?

You use hard drives and data storage devices every day. From your laptop and desktop to your phone and even thumb drives and CDs, you interact with countless storage devices daily. The issue is when you have a computer that needs to change hands in your company or if you want to get rid of the computer, what should you do about the hard drives? Should you reuse hard drives? You can, but there may be some additional steps you want to take, even if you decide to reuse them within your own company.

What Are the Risks of Reuse Within a Company?

If you run a business and you’ve had an employee leave or even just outgrow their hardware, it’s basically a standard practice to reuse that hardware. However, does that potentially put you at risk?

Allow us to present you with a scenario. A previous employee used their work computer for light personal use as well as work. Now, you give the computer to a new employee. The work data that was still on the computer may be of no concern, but what about the personal data? This represents a data breach and you could be liable for it.

Should You Avoid Reusing Company Computers?

No, not at all! You just need to take the proper precautions. You can either wipe the drive or physically destroy and replace the drive, but reuse the old computer with a new drive. If you are going to wipe the drive, you should know that just simple formatting is often not enough to ensure that old data is properly destroyed and unrecoverable. For this wipe, you should count on a certified data handling service like Sadoff. We can successfully wipe your drive and return it to service for you.

Destroying any drives physically is another option. This is an especially attractive option if your computers are still relying on old physical hard disk drives. Those old drives are often considered not worth reuse and you can instead physically destroy them and swap in a solid state drive or SSD.

Difference Between Physical and Digital Data Destruction

Can You Resell or Donate Old Hard Drives?

Whether you are trying to get rid of a hard drive or a computer with a hard drive, you may be considering reselling or donating. These are both options, but you will not want to do it before the drive is wiped. We often recommend physical destruction of the drive and replacement or allowing the next owner to supply their own. At the very least, you will want to make sure that your old data is properly handled.

Not only can Sadoff help you with this, but through our IT Asset Remarketing program, we can handle the data wipe, the testing, and the resale of the computers for you. If you have a lot of old computers that you are sitting on, let Sadoff take them off your hands and handle everything for you!
Read More: How Sadoff Can Help Managed IT Services

Sadoff Data Destruction Services

If you need data destroyed, Sadoff E-Recycling & Data Destruction is here to help. Our data destruction services are second to none. We are certified with more than the necessary certifications and we are ITAR registered. We have 8 locations spread across Wisconsin and Nebraska and we can provide our services nationwide with custom freight solutions. Reach out to us today for a quote.

Categorized in: Data Security, E-Recycle