Peggy Jones, a business manager for the information-management team at the College of Southern Maryland, was asked recently to help dispose of what she now estimates were about 1,200 old backup tapes and cassettes her IT organization had been storing in a relatively well-fortified walk-in vault.
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The issue of what to do with the old tapes came to a head when renovation was scheduled for the building where the vault resided. "We had already moved to another backup system. So, these old tapes didn't work in our current system anyway. Now it was just old data we needed to figure out how to dispose of properly," Jones says.
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Her research led her to Data Killers, a media-destruction and computer-recycling firm in Maryland that could shred tapes and hard drives securely, and provide a certificate affirming their destruction. It would even let you stay and watch the shredding process, if you wanted. Then the media's "remains" would be delivered to a smelter for melting and recycling its various metals.
With its 6,600-pound shredder, Data Killers is able to take just about any storage medium, such as the college's tapes, and turn it into particles the size of a thumbnail, owner Elizabeth Wilmot says.
Click to see: Shred it, forget it
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Jones and a co-worker soon found themselves loading the tapes into the back of one of the college's vehicles and driving to Data Killers. After spending what Jones recalls was "a little more than an hour" watching the shredding, they were able to report back that the deed had been done.
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Copyright 2008 Network World Inc.
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You are on the way to destruction make your time By Anonymous on April 17, 2007, 11:10 am Reply | Read entire comment Microwaving CD's really makes for a smelly microwave, you won't want to cook in it afterwards. But the sparks are pretty! Don't forget: Shoot It! http://www.taygeta.net/services/destruction.xml its...
Data Destruction By wilson on April 19, 2007, 9:35 pm Reply | Read entire comment Hi, your article about data destruction has been informative.i have small doubt is encrypting the data in hard disk protects the data from being stolen?? since...
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