Digital Shredder

Existing Methods Fall Short

EDT reviewed the market need and current solutions available. It became clear that existing methodologies for sanitizing hard drives all present opportunities for "leakage". As a result, EDT developed a product that the Critical Requirements that should be considered when developing a hard drive sanitization plan.

Each plan must provide the following:

  1. Provide a single-point solution that can be used during the entire hard drive lifecycle;
  2. Eliminate data beyond forensic reconstruction;
  3. Maintain care, custody and control throughout the process;
  4. Provide an automated certification process that completes a Best Practice audit trail;
  5. Deploy a scalable process providing corporate-wide compliance;
  6. Verify drive sanitization by sector - "trust but verify";
  7. Provide a green solution that allows reformatting and repurposing of hard drives.

Comparison of Data Destruction Methods
Critical Requirements EDT Digital Shredder Commercial Software Degaussing Machines Mechanical Destruction Third Party Providers
Provide a single-point solution that can be used during the entire hard drive lifecycle Yes Yes No No No
Eliminate data beyond forensic reconstruction Yes No Uncertain [1] Uncertain [2] Uncertain [3]
Maintain care, custody and control throughout the process Yes No [4] No [5] No No
Provide an automated certification process that completes a Best Practice audit trail Yes Uncertain [6] No No No
Deploy a scalable process providing corporate-wide compliance Yes No No No Yes
Verify drive sanitization by sector - “trust but verify” Yes Uncertain [7] No No No
Provide a green solution that allows reformatting and repurposing of hard drives Yes Yes No No Uncertain [8]


  1. Degaussing machines may not produce a strong enough magnetic field to destroy all of the data.
  2. Depends on the extent to which the disks have been shredded (NSA and NAID require that the maximum disk particle size is no larger than 1/250th in2.
  3. Depends on the method used by the Third Party Provider.
  4. Commercial Software does not provide physical lock down of the hard drives while they are being erased.
  5. In many cases, degaussing is a third party process. Also, the process disables the hard drive, there is no way to test and ensure that the data is gone.
  6. Depends if Commercial Software tracks hard drive serial numbers.
  7. Depends if a sector viewer feature is included.
  8. Depends on the method used by the Third Party Provider.

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