When a large technology company upgrades its employees’ computers or its servers, it always destroys the old systems. They mainly physically destroy their hard drives with industrial shredders for fear of data leaks. Many experts argue against this practice, since it could erase the data safely and the hard drives, in perfect condition, can continue to be used.
Destroy hard drives for no reason
The prestigious media Financial Time has published a report on the procedures of large technology companies. normal is destroy servers and hard drives every few years, when they consider them obsolete. These systems are fully functional, being able to clean and sell without major problems.
Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft or Google, among other things, they update the storage hardware every four or five years. They are not the only ones, banks, police departments or government agencies, among others, carry out these practices.
Every year, millions of storage devices considered obsolete. A leak of sensitive data, no matter how small, can have enormous legal consequences. To avoid problems, they simply destroy the equipment.
Recently, in United States He has fined Morgan Stanley by the Securities and Exchange Commission for auctioning off thousands of hard drives before erasing them. to be fined $35 million for leaking customer data.
The destruction of this functional material is a real environmental problem. These electronic wastes are difficult to treat, moreover they are functional components.
Change on the part of companies is happening because the the new hardware is much more energy efficient. But that’s apparently the case, since most carbon emissions come from manufacturing, not mining. A few weeks ago it was already published that the manufacture of SSDs generates twice as many emissions as HDDs.
A problem of origin, manufacture
It must be said that approximately 70% of the shredded material is recovered and recycled, which is a lot. The biggest problem lies in the generation of carbon and energy used to manufacture the components. The longer the time of use, the more the emission factor is diluted.
Performing a destruction of these components has an additional negative thing. All computer components require rare earths for their manufacture. The problem is that these rare earths are lost in the process, they are not recoverable and must be extracted again. Extracting them requires polluting chemicals and fuels, among other things. Moreover, some of these materials are obtained in conflict zones.
It should be noted that the belief that destruction is the only way to guarantee safety. Experts say the level of destruction is not necessary. They indicate that it is difficult to steal data if proper cleaning is done.
Shredded systems can continue to be used for years or decades without issue. In addition, Google and Microsoft have indicated that they have started using refurbished servers. They are few, but let’s see if this practice develops and becomes standardized.
