It’s not unreasonable that before you upgrade to a new device and dispose of your old one you want to back up and securely destroy electronic data. Your personal information, passwords and deep, dark secrets on that computer deserve to be protected. Businesses, in particular, care about making sure their data is protected from getting in the wrong hands. In fact, compliance with secure data destruction is a legal issue for many, especially the medical and legal professions.

DIY Options

Mac

Of course, you searched how to wipe your old Mac’s hard disk drive (HDD) or destroyed data on that solid state drive (SSD). You’ve read about how to securely erase your drives, even how to disassemble your hard drives hunting for every screw you could see, how to destroy those platters dressed in a “haz mat” suit and goggles. Maybe you’ve even had the foresight to do a full-disk encryption for all your drives, thinking you don’t have to worry about your data being accessed – or stolen – when you get rid of them. OK, maybe you don’t need to sweat the secure erase of the SSD drive because a standard erase makes it difficult to recover data from an SSD.

PC

In general, you’ve taken good care of your old PC’s data. You’ve deleted files, performed a disk partitioning, re-formatted the hard drive. Perhaps you’ve obtained the clever names of software programs that will take care of destroying that data quickly and easily, for very little money, and perhaps even for free.

Reality

Realize this: while there are those who write software to protect your data, there are also people who easily un-do or hack those programs and find those files.

When you thought even more seriously about securely disposing of that PC, you learned how to destroy the magnetic platter inside. Using a special screwdriver to remove as many screws as you can see and access, as with the Mac, you probably could remove the main circuit board from the enclosure.

With either a PC or a MAC you will truly enjoy your weekend attempting to destroy the contents of your hard drive, hoping you did it correctly. Got a spare degausser? A drill? Fact is, it’s necessary to either completely destroy the physical device or use a hard drive degausser.