I wrote about data sanitization using the IEEE P2883 standard back in 2022. This is a standard for sanitization of the data in storage devices using certified methods that work on each storage type. Today, many storage devices, such as HDDs and SSDs are incinerated or melted in order to ensure that no data can be read from these storage devices. While this makes the data that was on the storage device inaccessible, it means that the device cannot be reused and it also makes it difficult to reuse or recycle components and materials from the storage device.
Often times storage devices from data centers can continue to be used for some time before they fail and thus the potential useful life of these incinerated or melted storage devices is less than it could be. Also, storage devices can contain valuable materials, such as the rare earth magnetics in HDDs that have economic value. Being able to sanitize storage devices using the IEEE 2883 standard makes it possible to reuse discarded storage devices and at end of life to recover valuable materials from these devices.
I have used storage devices for many years, these include both internal HDDs in computers and external storage devices containing HDDs. I have kept all of my old failed HDDs. I recently decided to get rid of these drives as they took up space and asked my contacts about a good place to sanitize and recycle my old drives. I was referred to Horizon Technologies of Scituate, MA. Horizon is transitioning to using the P2883 sanitization method although it wasn’t used on my HDD. Instead, the older NIST sanitization methods were used.
I had 13 HDDs to get rid of, including a number of 2.5-inch form factor drives from old laptops and a number of internal 3.5-inch HDDs from old computers and NAS boxes. I also had two external HDD devices that contained 3.5-inch HDDs. These HDDs were made by several different manufacturers. Horizon sent me a box for packing my HDDs and HDD devices that included conductive foil plastic containers for protecting the drives from static electricity. The image below shows my box of HDDs ready to seal up and ship to Horizon for sanitization and recycling.
After a week or so passed, Stephen Buckler from Horizon send me information on the process and results of the sanitization of my old HDDs. Following is what he told me. “Each drive is tracked by individual serial number as it works through Horizon’s operational processes with a system of checks and balances ensuring workflow compliance.
Drives are sanitized of data utilizing wiping software erasing all Logical Block Addresses (LBAs) and sectors on the drives. If drive is secure erase enabled, then secure erase is utilized as the preferred method. All drives are checked post wipe for data to ensure all data has been eradicated.
Drives are segregated by test/wipe results. Drives failing data sanitization are degaussed and rendered unusable as the media will be destroyed and unable to be read/write. The non-recoverable assets are disposed of in strict compliance with local, state, and national regulations with serialized certificates of destruction provided.
Serialized certificates of wipe and or destruction are provided for proof of data sanitization and or drive destruction. All products must pass our system driven outbound audit (OBA) that includes verification of serialized test and wipe results by individual drive before leaving the facility.”
In my case, of the 13 drives, all but two were sanitized using the NIST standard methods and the remaining 2 were wiped using a degaussing method that makes the drive unusable. These two drives were recycled and the remaining drives could be reused.
Using a service such as Horizon Technologies allowed me to get rid of several years of old HDDs without fear that data from these storage devices could be recovered by someone and used for bad purposes. I was pleased that some of these drives may go on to be reused rather than disposed of and that the two remaining drives that had to be wiped would allow recycling of valuable HDD components.
I recently tried an HDD sanitization and disposal service to get rid of several old HDDs. By using approved sanitization methods most of my old drives could be reused and all of them could have their parts recycled. I felt good that my old drives could be reused or the valuable parts recycled.
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