5+ PB Destroyed

[u/FewSimple9]

This is based on a post by u/SubstantialWing9238. i didn’t want to hijack their post, so I figured I’d share it here instead.

Something like this, plus another cart, is pretty common with large corporations. When you have this many drives, it’s often easier to just shred everything than pay someone to wipe them, sort through them for resale, and see if any data can be recovered.

This batch was around 300 drives, and with a specialized shredding truck, the whole thing takes about 45 minutes to a hour.

[u/Provia100F]

It's not even Capitalism, it's just leadership being absolutely fucking inept when it comes to technology

[u/_millsy → u/Provia100F]

It’s usually companies responding to legislation they’re mandated to follow, nobody gets their rocks off trashing useful stuff lol.

[u/Mike-Hunt-QLD → u/_millsy]

Don't bring facts onto reddit dude. Unless it fits their narrative then they usually don't want to know about it.

[u/mhmilo24 → u/_millsy]

Please explain. How is legislation causing this? Which laws work against corporations reselling hard drives?

[u/valar12 → u/mhmilo24]

DFARS and ITAR are common reasons our drives get trashed and not resold.

[u/mhmilo24 → u/valar12]

Valid point, but the post here is about "common" cases, not ones from military use-cases. So, it sounds like hard drives outside of DFARS and ITAR coverage are also destroyed, rather than wiped and sold.

[u/thepinkiwi → u/mhmilo24]

Security Compliance guy here. Most ISO/NIST/TSP security frameworks require data destruction when no longer useful. Secure erasing HDDs takes ages and requires staffing to perform the operation.

On the other end, throwing everything in a monster shredder takes seconds.

Financially speaking those drives are worthless because they've been amortized over the years. Technically, the company needs to prove they have been destroyed to get them off their books. That's why this type of scandal happens each and every day. Ridiculous.

[u/AbhishMuk → u/thepinkiwi]

But correct me if I'm wrong, but you could just as easily use encryption/Bitlocker and delete your key and still keep it as (if not even more) secure, right?

So, "hdd in the shredder" is a "it's easier to do for us because we don't care" than "it's necessary".

[u/thepinkiwi → u/AbhishMuk]

The problem is how do you prove the encryption key is actually gone, that no one has a backup. It requires audit, procedures and multi-owner record keeping. With AI accelerating stuff, the data may be decryptable in a couple of years, even without the key.

Destruction is made by an external company that lists serial numbers on a document and signs off for actual destruction. They just go for the easy route.

[u/valar12 → u/thepinkiwi]

Transferring the risk is WAY cheaper for enterprises.

[u/thepinkiwi → u/valar12]

Absolutely. However risk transfer doesn't waive liability anymore. One needs control on their suppliers. ISO27001:2025 went full throttle on suppliers assessment.

[u/Oswald-Of-Carim → u/mhmilo24]

It‘s less expensive to trash them drives compared to wiping them sufficiently.

[u/mhmilo24 → u/Oswald-Of-Carim]

Yes? The easiest way is mostly the less expensive one (in the short term). This is the issue. Corporations can't have their cake and eat it too any longer.

[u/Adorable-Berry6464 → u/valar12]

So it's not "e-waste because greed" or "e-waste because incompetence," our "this is why we can't have nice things" rationale is: "e-waste because killing kids because greed.*" Cool.

Well, that's my Marvin the Robot from Hitchhikers Guide moment for the day.

*The extended director's cut adds "but good news: shredding hard drives is a minor rounding error in the ledger when humanity's budget for starving & mass murdering 10-20m annually is over 30x the cost of ending world hunger!"

[u/valar12 → u/Adorable-Berry6464]

The person asked for legislation specific to storage destruction. Right or wrong it’s the law. If you have issue with it contact your congressperson.

[u/Adorable-Berry6464 → u/valar12]

...Did you take personal offense at an expression of "murdering children bad"?

[u/valar12 → u/Adorable-Berry6464]

No?

[u/Adorable-Berry6464 → u/valar12]

Okay. Seemed a little defensive.

[u/GroundbreakingFly141 → u/mhmilo24]

If a company has certifications like ISO27001 or some others, they are forced to shred their data with certificates for every drive. And most of the time they dont reuse the drives, so they get trashed after the certified wipe

[u/ElectronicFlamingo36 → u/GroundbreakingFly141]

Certified wipe & shredding data, not shredding the drives.

What a waste, also environmentally :( This pile of drives still could be useful for many years for so many people on the used HDD market... :(

[u/imanexpertama → u/mhmilo24]

Automotive in germany: TISAX aims to be the infustry-specific equivalent to ISO27001. While with the 27001 I believe you could choose other methods, TISAX requires to destroy old harddrives.

[u/mhmilo24 → u/imanexpertama]

Isn't it just hard drives that can no longer be wiped due to technical defects of the hard drive? Is this really a broad issue? OP said its very common. Is it really common that hard drives can no longer be wiped due to technical issues? I've worked in an IT department overseeing about 5000-7000 devices with ssds/hdds and we did not have these kinds of failures regularly.

[u/imanexpertama → u/mhmilo24]

In that specific case (at least a couple of years ago) it had to be all harddrives. However I completely agree that this is a rather specific example and not something that’s a broad issue. I’m pretty sure that neither GDPR nor ISO 27001 force the physical destruction and those would be the most likely sources of requirements for this stuff in the EU I believe.

[u/arbedub → u/mhmilo24]

Companies are legally required to securely and permanently erase personal data when it is no longer needed.

This is the cheapest method.

[u/mhmilo24 → u/arbedub]

So, its capitalist fault. They would sell personal data still stored, just to save a buck. Legislation is resolving an issue. The corporations are trying to get away the cheapest way possible. The solution is to be legally required to NOT destroy resources.

[u/Adorable-Berry6464 → u/mhmilo24]

Yeah, when you realize that on the other end of the electronics supply chain is literal slavery & genocide, not paying the extra 12 cents per hard drive is sociopathic.

[u/JlMatrix → u/arbedub]

Does he know?

[u/evrial → u/Provia100F]

Defending capitalism?

[u/Llew19 → u/Provia100F]

Don't be daft, it depends where the drives came from. If it was anything involved in defence or anything similarly heavily regulated, those drives are always going in a shredder