Millions of perfectly fine HDDs are shredded each year because of 'zero risk' security policies. Spoiler alert: There's still a risk of stolen data from just a 3mm scrap
People are murdering innocent old hard drives. Millions of them, lost to the unfounded credence that churning them up actually protects data left on them from being recovered and stolen. Spoiler alert: It doesn't. So why are 90% of all retired datacenter HDDs still being shredded every year?
According to BBC News, this is the question members of the Circular Drive Initiative (CDI) have been asking for some time. The CDI is essentially a collective of tech companies that have all come together to fight for the dying HDD, fuelled by a passion for reuse and keeping e-waste to a minimum, despite the general consensus that hard drives are predicted to be history after 2028.
Companies involved in the CDI include Seagate, Western Digital, and Micron, as well as the blockchain-centric Chia Network, for whom my new hard drive hero Jonmichael Hands works.
As secretary and treasurer of the CDI, he spoke to IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) firms about how his company might nab and reuse some old datacenter drives, so they don't go to waste. Hands was waved off with an apology. «Sorry, we have to shred old drives.»
«One ITAD provider said they were shredding five million drives for a single customer», says Hands. A travesty if you ask me. More importantly this rather extreme, so-called «zero-risk» solution for retired HDDs isn't without fault.
As it turns out, there are more dangers lurking in those piles of mashed-up metal.
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If you were to simply throw out your old hard
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