Every drive's make and serial number is scanned in before it goes near the shredder. That's the part of hard drive shredding services that matters later, because the certificate lists them, and we issue it before we leave. Our own crew and shredder work on your site or at ours, from Church Crookham, Fleet, Hampshire, covering London and Heathrow.
We can audit, decommission and destroy end of life server drives without them leaving your site, using our HSM Powerline StoreEx HDS 150 shredder. It suits large volumes of 2.5" and 3.5" hard disk drives.
If you'd rather the drives travelled, we take them to our facility in sealed conditions and shred them there. Either way you get a certificate.
At up to 210 drives an hour the shredding itself is quick. Scanning every serial in first is the part we don't skip.
The same shredder takes magnetic tape (DLT, Ultrium and LTO), optical media, credit and ID cards, USB sticks, solid state drives and phones. Tapes can also be degaussed on site. The SV91M handles all the usual backup tape types, including LTO 1 to 8, at 40 an hour.
We've done a lot of tape. In October 2021 we lifted a fireproof safe holding 500 LTO tapes onto a truck with a truck mounted crane, and a separate 400 LTO tapes were audited and destroyed at our warehouse. Same process as for drives: audit, scan, destroy, certificate.
Our shredder is an HSM Powerline StoreEx HDS 150. It destroys data carriers at security level H-3 (a 40mm strip cut), and the DIN 66399 levels it covers are T-1, E-2 and H-3. It takes drives up to 3.5" wide and does up to 210 hard drives an hour.
Shredding in an office or loading bay is subject to the site survey. A drive that's gone through this shredder can't be put back together, and the strips go to recycling, not landfill.
For a handful of drives, bringing the shredder and a two person team is more than the job needs. The cheaper option is to degauss the drives and puncture the platters on site, then take them to our facility sealed, shred them and issue the certificate.
Our degausser is a Verity Systems SV91M, which has NATO approval. It erases a drive in around 12 seconds with a magnetic force of 7,000 Gauss, and does 20 hard drives or 40 backup tapes an hour.
For puncturing we use a Baileigh 3 ton arbor press that we've modified with a 2.5 inch hardened steel spike, so there's a hole through the platters. It's a bit of home engineering, and it works.
Auditors ask for more than a certificate. These three downloads show what a proper set of records looks like and let you check any supplier's paperwork against your own asset register. All free, no form.
The Sample Certificate of Destruction shows what a proper certificate for hard drive destruction looks like, entry by entry, and why each entry is there. It uses an invented client, invented serial numbers and a made-up reference, so nothing in it is a real record.
The On-Site Shredding Evidencing Pack sets out the records that prove hard drives, SSDs and backup tapes were destroyed, where, by whom and against which asset list. It is a framework for the evidence bundle issued after an on-site shredding job.
The IT Asset Register and Serial Reconciliation Sheet is an Excel workbook that checks a certificate of destruction against your own asset register, serial number by serial number.
It's destroying the media that holds your data so nobody can read it again. Secure means you can prove it: every drive scanned in by make and serial number, destroyed in a way that can't be reversed, and a certificate that lists them.
Yes. We feed them into an industrial shredder that cuts them into 40mm strips.
It takes 2.5" and 3.5" drives, and the same machine does tapes, optical discs, USB sticks, solid state drives and phones. Our guide to how to destroy a hard drive compares the other methods.
We don't have a standard price, and there are no hard drive shredding prices to quote. What moves the cost is how many drives you have, whether we bring the shredder to you or take the drives away, and how far we travel. It also depends on whether the kit has to be listed or de-racked first, and on the media: tapes and SSDs behave differently from hard drives.
For a handful of drives, degaussing and puncturing is the cheaper route. Send us the count and the address and we'll quote.
If you mean buying one, that's a capital purchase before you count the power, a place to run it, someone trained to use it and the paperwork. It only makes sense if you destroy drives all the time.
Most firms use a service instead. Ours is an HSM Powerline StoreEx HDS 150 and it comes to you.
Some do, but paper shredding and certified drive destruction are different jobs. Ask any supplier whether they can scan in serial numbers, shred drives on site or in a sealed vehicle, and issue a certificate that lists each drive.
That's what we do. On big clearances we bag paper for a confidential waste partner.
It lists the makes, models and serial numbers we scanned in, and it's issued before we leave. You can check it against your own register with our reconciliation sheet. More in our guide to the certificate of destruction for hard drives.
We come to you, anywhere in the UK and Europe. The shredder travels in one of our own vehicles with a two person team, and it runs from a normal 13 amp socket or our generator.
We work from Church Crookham, Fleet, Hampshire, and cover London and Heathrow. In London, see IT disposal in London.
Degaussing uses a strong magnetic field to erase the data on a drive or tape, and it makes the drive useless. We do it on site with a Verity Systems SV91M. For very small quantities we degauss, then puncture the platters, then shred the drives at our facility and issue the certificate.
Tell us how many drives, what kind, and where, and we'll come back with questions or a quote.
We work from Church Crookham, Fleet, Hampshire. Jobs in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and across Europe all run from there, with our own crews.
We have your details. Someone from the team will read it and come back to you by phone or email.
That did not send. Please try again, or call +44(0) 1932 247 365.
