2.9 - CompTIA A+ Core 2

Physical destruction of hard drives

Drilling

• Drilling: Destroying storage devices with a drill - you can destroy all the platters of a hard drive or SSD chips.

Shredding

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

Degaussing

• 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

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

Recycling or repurposing best practices

Erasing/wiping

Low-level formatting

• 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. Makes the data unrecoverable.

Standard formatting

• Standard formatting/quick formatting: A formatting method that creates a new file table, but does not clear the data stored on the storage drive - it can be recovered with the right software.

Outsourcing concepts

Third-party vendor

• Destruction is often done by a third party.

Certification of destruction/recycling

• Certification of destruction/recycling: A certificate that verifies data has been destroyed according to customer requirements.

Regulatory and environmental requirements

• Regulatory and environmental requirements: Guidelines that dictate how electronic waste should be handled, ensuring compliance with laws to protect the environment and prevent hazardous materials from contaminating landfills.