Our data wiping & destruction service
Data is the single element every business has in common. No matter what your company does, it almost certainly possesses sensitive information that needs to be kept confidential.
Some of that information you may need to archive securely for some time. Some you might be legally required to destroy. It’s not impossible that a large company might have huge amounts of confidential data that needs to be regularly erased, particularly as part of an IT asset management lifecycle.
Our IT asset disposal service offers a closed loop recycling programme to dispose of your laptops, servers, phones and tablets, and it includes the completely secure wiping, erasure and destruction of confidential data.
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What type of storage
do you have?
It’s worth being aware of the different kinds of hard drive technology out there, because each responds differently when having its data removed. Solid state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) are the two main storage options that companies use:
HDD
Older ‘legacy’ technology
A data storage device inside the computer with moving parts
Spinning disks inside that store data magnetically
SSD
Doesn’t have moving parts like an HDD
Stores its data in its circuitry, rather than a disk
SSDs can be much smaller and their uses more flexible
``CTR has provided collection services to Sense for nearly 10 years. Their levels of professionalism and service resulted in Sense awarding CTR our whole estate in recent years. We have also been able to recommend CTR to other charities as the textile recycler of choice, based on our experience.``
“Cats Protection have worked with CTR since 2016 to support our shop’s recycling needs and we have always been highly satisfied. In particular, the communication from CTR is always completely transparent… and there is always a quick response and remedy to any issues that arise. We look forward to our continuing partnership with CTR.”
What happens when you wipe data?
Simply deleting files does not remove them. The actual file is still there. All that has been deleted is the marker showing where the file can be found, whether it’s accessed using FAT, MFT or NTFS protocols. This is how data is ‘recovered’ after deletion.
To make that data unrecoverable on HDDs, we recommend a secure data wiping method that overwrites new data over the old. The challenge is that there may be areas on the hard drive where data is still accessible, and it can be recoverable by experts with the right tools.
By contrast SSDs are harder to wipe than HDDs, because they store data randomly. It means that because the drive wears evenly (unlike HDDs) it is much harder to know where data has been written, and SSDs also contain hidden areas. Due to their solid state nature, you can’t simply erase individual files – everything on the drive needs to be wiped.
How to make sure data is removed permanently
The CTR Group offers both data wiping, erasure and hard drive destruction services.
Erasure offers you the opportunity to permanently destroy data files while keeping the hardware intact for reselling, whether it’s for recycling or reuse.
We also offer a hard drive destruction service. By contrast with data wiping and erasure, destruction is simple and 100% effective. We find it to be the most surefire way to avoid any data breaches and subsequent huge GDPR fines. We can either crush on site or take away with us and crush and granulate on our premises.
For total peace of mind, each of our services include a certificate of destruction along with an itemised list of what was destroyed.