Advice from a Certified Hard Drive Destruction Company 

Recycling computers is actively encouraged. It helps others in your community, and the environment. Before you take your old laptops, desktops, and monitors down to the recycle center, you want to ensure no one can steal any existing information. Just deleting files and emptying the recycle bin on your laptop doesn’t guarantee that another person will not be able to retrieve any personal information. Hard drives contain data such as usernames, passwords, confidential data, bank account details, credit card information, browser history, photographs, and more. Removing and destroying your hard drives by a certified hard drive destruction company is the best option for keeping old data out of cyber thugs’ hands. 

Tips to Properly Prepare Your PCs and Laptops for Recycling or Disposal

In today’s world, cleaning out data from PCs and laptops before you send them out of your office or facility is vital. However, you don’t want to remove the hard drive and place it in your trash. Many cybercriminals are passionate about dumpster diving! Instead of giving them full license to your company’s information, use these tips to prepare your PCs and laptops for recycling, and store the hard drives for destruction:

1. Back up files. Have your IT department fully back up all files from the computer. This includes documents, photos, videos, and other files saved on the machine.
2. Transfer licensed software. Some software can be transferred to new devices. To do so, you may have to deactivate them on the old machine first, then reactivate them on your new one.
3. Wipe the hard drive clean. This step includes resetting or reinstalling the operating system to factory settings.
4. Pull out hard drives. The best option to keep others from stealing and misusing any data is to pull out the hard drive and send it off to be destroyed by certified professionals.
5. Place hard drives in a safe place. Set up a secure place for the hard drives to rest until your preferred shredding company comes onsite to take charge of destroying them safely.

Choose Crown Information Management for Your Hard Drive Destruction Needs

Don’t give cybercriminals an opportunity to ruin your company’s hard earned reputation. When it is time to recycle your PCs and laptops, be sure to properly dispose of your hard drives. Choose Crown Information Management to handle the destruction of your hard drives and other media. We provide secure, total destruction followed by a certificate of destruction for your records. We are NAID AAA and PCI Certified, meaning we know what needs to be done and how to do so effectively. We can also help with records storage and document destruction solutions for all your needs. 

For timely destruction of documents, products, and hard drives, and secure, pest-free storage with a SOC1,NAID AAA, and PCI Certified company, call Crown Information Management at 800-979-9545. You can also contact us online to learn more about our document storage and shredding services.