Hard Drive Destruction

GDPR Degaussing Hard Drives & Tapes Data Destruction Service in Northern Ireland, Belfast. Talk to us today!

If you use PC’s, Apple or Computers you have hard drives or solid-state drives in them. Does your business have a file servers or backup tapes to store personal, clients or financial data, it’s essential that you deal with them securely when the time comes to discard or upgrade them to be fully GDPR compliant

What is Hard Drive and Tape degaussing?

Degaussing is a pre-destruction degaussing process often used by the UK Governments and UK military forces to destroy data for good. It is the technical process of securely sanitising magnetic media from hard drives and tapes that contains sensitive information to render the data irretrievable and to become fully GDPR compliant.

Data thieves can sometimes recover and read digital data even after it’s been deleted or overwritten. Degaussing uses a powerful magnetic field to completely remove the data from tapes and hard drives so that it can never be read again.

Products recommended for this process are removable magnetic media such as hard drives, backup tapes and floppy disks.

Degaussing service in Northern Ireland and Belfast.

We can carry out degaussing either at your business offices, with our mobile unit, or at our own secure premises on 117 Ormeau Road.

We use a machine that is approved by both NATO and the UK government to securely wipe your data. It also meets the standards set by both the US Department of Defence and the National Security Agency. We are in Northern Ireland but not it shows how save and secure this way is of destroying client and business data for good.

Degaussing & shredding hard drives and tapes

Some companies and agencies in Northern Ireland prefer their data to be erased before digital media are destroyed. To meet this need, we can offer a combined degaussing & shredding services in our office or come to you offices.

This service is available on-site, off-site or in any combination in Northern Ireland. For example, companies or agencies using our off-site destruction service may prefer degaussing on-site before the media is transported for destruction at our depots. Or we can perform degaussing and shredding on-site anywhere in Northern Ireland.

Our services are flexible and we tailor the service to meet your business requirements in Northern Ireland and Belfast.

Our GDPR Hard Disk Drive and & Tape destruction Service in Belfast, Northern Ireland. How it works and what we do.

If you are curious how we destroy business data every day in Belfast and Northern Ireland and what we actually do to make sure that your business and data is protected have a read about it in my short article below.

A business PC, Computer, Laptop, Apple MacBook and iMac is coming to the end of its life but all your business data is still on there and you are concerned that it gets in the wrong hands or you could get fined by the ICO because you are not GDPR compliant. Step one you come to our office on 117 Ormeau Road Belfast

When you arrive the first thing what we do is scanning your hard drive barcode to and create a record for a certificate of destruction. Most Hard Drives and Tapes do have a Serial number that makes it easy to keep track of them. We also recorded the Brand of Drive and Data of Destruction for our degaussing Service.

In this case we are scanning a 2TB Western Digital Hard Drive and get it ready for the next step. In case no serial number is available we would apply a security tag or sticker and use it instead. This hard drive is about 90% full with account data and it would take hours to wipe it with software.

The next step would be to have your hard drive magnetically wiped. The technical term is called degaussing. It takes about 2min for the degausser to warm up and get ready. During the warm up time we prepare a couple other things and check we got the correct drives from you. Last check that nobody with a pacemaker is around and we are ready

Degaussing – a form of demagnetizing – is the process wherein a magnetic object, such as a computer tape, hard disk drive, or CRT monitor, is exposed to a magnetic field of greater, fluctuating intensity. A degausser is the machine that produces this intense magnetic field. When exposed to a fluctuating magnetic field produced by a degausser, the magnetic charge of an object is reset to a magnetically neutral state.

Our degausser or cooker what we like to call it is charging up the coils and capacitors and this may take 30 seconds. Once the coils are fully charged the magnetic field is being released in under 1 seconds. The sound it makes is difficult to describe but sounds almost metal is cracking or buckling. The process is safe for people around the machine but you should not have a pacemaker or wear any metal objects.

Now the hard drive is completely wiped and no data can be recovered by anyone. Also, the drive will not work anymore. It will spin up but doesn’t initialise. Most hard drives keep their operating system on the magnetic plate in an area called SA. Since the whole hard drive is wiped there is no hard drive operating system to boot from anymore and the drive can’t work.

The last step would be to mark the drive with a red sticker to indicate it was erased & degaussed. All data will be recorded in a certificate of destruction that provides the serial number, data of destruction, brand and what method was being used to destroy the data. You will receive your certificate of destruction on the spot or within 24 hours.

It can be that simply to be compliant and doesn’t a fortune either for your business. Your business should have a process in place to by GDPR compliant when your computers getting disposed or recycled. Cost for degaussing a tape or hard drive start from £6.50 + VAT. We also rent out our hard drive crushers and degausser in case your IT team needs some exercise or you want even more control of the whole process.

We have an open office policy when it comes to data destruction and we do not mind you watching us while we destroy your business hard drives. If you feel adventurous you can push the degaussing button yourself and we can provide you with a data recovery machine to check if data has been really destroyed. Our service is fully transparent and confidential.

Make sure your business in GDPR compliant by destroying your data

There is no regulation in place enforcing a shred size that is GDPR compliant. GDPR is a new part of The Data Protection Act 2018 that requires all organisations to ensure their data is secure and not breached or shared without the individual’s permission. Magnetic wiping is one of the highest security possible to ensure your data is destroyed and cannot be recovered.

We can recycle your old hard drive

What can you expect when contacting NicoGroup Data Recovery for all your business data destruction needs? Who would be the best for the job, I think a business dealing with data recovery knows exactly what to do and how to destroy data. We do not employee sales people either that can be pushy. All work is done by senior members only that care about the quality of their work and understand that mistakes can simply not happened. The owner of the business is from Germany and all jobs are done to the highest standard following strict policies and guidelines you can expect from a German run business.

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