Physical data destruction is meant to stop any data leaks that may occur post media retirement. Physical destruction is the most trusted method and highly recommended by data security experts to completely destroy all media and leaving the data unrecoverable.
Possible sources of data leaks are:
- Selling or disposing of computers without properly destroying data.
- Returning defective hard drives to vendors with data intact.
- Disposing of useful hard drives without appropriately erasing data.
Businesses can physically destroy data in several different ways of ways, such as disk shredding, crushing, melting or any other method that makes physical storage media unusable and unreadable.