A company is retiring old workstations and needs a certificate of destruction for all hard drives. Which of the following would be BEST to perform on the hard drives to ensure the data is unrecoverable? (Select TWO).

The request for a "certificate of destruction" implies a need for the highest level of assurance that data is unrecoverable. This is best achieved through physical destruction of the storage media. Drilling holes through the hard drive's platters and incinerating the drive are both forms of physical destruction. These methods physically damage or destroy the magnetic platters where data is stored, rendering any form of data recovery impossible. Certified data destruction companies commonly use these methods and provide certificates as proof of secure disposal.

A. Standard formatting: This method only removes the file system's pointers to the data, leaving the actual data intact and easily recoverable with common software tools.
C. Erasing: This term is ambiguous. While secure erasing (overwriting) is a valid sanitization method, physical destruction is more definitive and often required for a certificate of destruction.
D. Recycling: This is a method of disposal, not data destruction. Drives must be securely sanitized or destroyed before being sent for recycling to prevent data breaches.
F. Low-level formatting: This process is more thorough than standard formatting but is not considered a secure destruction method against advanced recovery techniques and is often not user-accessible on modern drives.

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (December 2014). Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1

Guidelines for Media Sanitization. U.S. Department of Commerce.

Section 2.5

"Destroy": "Destroy techniques are the ultimate form of sanitization... The media is not reusable for data storage." (p. 8).

Table A-1

"Minimum Sanitization Recommendations - Magnetic Disks": For media containing high-impact or classified information

the recommended action is "Destroy (Disintegrate

Pulverize

Melt

or Incinerate)." Drilling is a form of disintegration. (p. 49).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-88r1

2. University of Michigan

Information and Technology Services. (n.d.). Sensitive Data Guide: Securely Deleting Data.

Section: "Physical Destruction": "The most secure method of deleting data is to physically destroy the media on which it is stored... Examples of physical destruction include... Drilling holes through a hard drive." This source validates physical destruction

specifically drilling

as a top-tier method.

3. Stanford University. (n.d.). Data Sanitization and Disposal. University IT.

Section: "Physical Destruction": The document lists "Physical destruction (e.g.

shredding

pulverizing)" as an approved method for sanitizing university-owned devices

reinforcing its status as a best practice in an academic and institutional setting.