2.9 - CompTIA A+ Core 2

Drilling

Destroying storage devices with a drill, effectively destroying all the platters of a hard drive or SSD chips.

Shredding

Use of an industrial shredder to physically shred hard drives and other storage devices into small pieces, ensuring data recovery is nearly impossible.

Degaussing

A process that uses a high-powered magnet to disrupt the magnetic fields on storage devices, effectively erasing all data stored on them.

Incineration

Use of fire/high temperatures to destroy a hard drive.

Low-level formatting

A method used to prepare a hard drive for data storage by clearing individual disk partitions and rewriting the disk with zeroes, making the data unrecoverable.

Standard formatting (quick formatting)

A formatting method that creates a new file table but does not clear the data stored on the drive; data can be recovered with the right software.

Third-party vendor

A company that performs data destruction, often on behalf of another company.

Certification of destruction/recycling

A certificate that verifies data has been destroyed according to customer requirements.

Regulatory and environmental requirements

Guidelines that dictate how electronic waste should be handled, ensuring compliance with laws to protect the environment.