October 14, 2017, 7:41 am | Read time: 1 minute
Want to dispose of your old smartphone or hard drive? Don’t forget to securely erase the data. Raw force often isn’t enough, as an experiment shows.
How much effort is needed to make data carriers truly unusable? This question was answered by colleagues at Business Insider UK with an experiment.
As seen in the video, it’s very easy to recover files–at least for experts. In the experiment, the colleagues attempted to completely destroy six electronic devices: an external hard drive, a USB stick, a laptop, a desktop computer, a tablet, and a smartphone were smashed, thrown, and soaked in water.
The data recovery experts from Kroll Ontrack were then tasked with finding usable data on the devices.
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Making data unusable is harder than you think, as the video proves. Despite the greatest efforts, many data could be recovered from the devices. A clear argument for wiping hard drives and other media two to three times before handing them over.