On
January 1st, 2010, Indiana's new Electronic Waste Program law (IC
13-20.5) goes into effect. This is one of the nation's most
stringent electronic and computer waste disposal ordinances. IC
13-20.5 prohibits the disposal of computers, printers, peripherals,
monitors and DVD players or VCRs into landfills. |
E-scrap
must be disposed of with a State approved E-cycler on the list to be
published by the IWEP in January. CCR is glad to announce that we
have already completed our registration with the state, and we will be
on the list; so our Indiana clients do not need to worry about any
service interruption or changes with this new law.
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When
I'm asked how difficult it is to get all the data off of a hard drive, I tell
this story - it's a little grizzly, but I think it gets the point across.
When
the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry in February 2003, one of the
items recovered was a Seagate ATA hard drive - the same type of desktop hard
drive found in
many PCs. It had been used to record data for one of
the experiments conducted during the mission. I emphasize that this was not
some space-age NASA built hard drive - it was just a regular desktop drive.
Now,
considering that this drive had been through a huge explosion, and then
fallen over 100,000 feet back to Earth, how much data do you think the
specialists were able to recover? 5%, perhaps 10%?
99% of the drive's data was recovered - and in under two days.
Given
this, how does the ordinary person go about disposing of the data on
their hard drive when it's time to upgrade? What are the
available methods, and which ones truly work? As most people know,
deleting files from your desktop doesn't actually remove them - it only
removes them from the computer's "directory" - the data is still there
until something else is written over it, (this is called, with a
distinct lack of imagination "overwriting"). Now, in theory,
overwriting is supposed to remove the data - in fact, you will often
hear the term "Department of Defense Wipe" used as a standard for
deleting data by overwriting - this is a protocol that the DOD
instituted years ago; They decided (don't ask me how) that most of the
data on a drive is not recoverable once the drive has been overwritten
with random data seven times.
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Above - the drive in question
So
overwriting seems kind of secure, right? And there is all sorts
of commercial software you can buy to do it in your own home or office,
right? Well, remember that a drive is primarily a magnetic
medium. Let's talk about another magnetic medium - did you ever have a
cassette tape recorder? Did you ever record over a tape, and then
when you played it back, you could hear a faint echo of the original
tape? That happened when the heads on your tape deck went a
little out of alignment, and they didn't exactly write over the old
data. The same thing can happen to a hard drive - the heads can
be a little out of alignment and miss the exact track the old data was
on.
Know all of this, how do you erase the data and
make darn sure it is gone? For my money, there is only one
surefire method for destroying hard drive data, and it's the only
method we use at CCR; electromagnetic degaussing. We pass the
drives through a commercial drive degausser that generates a magnetic
field powerful enough completely realign the field within the drive -
in short, we are removing all the magnetic data at an atomic level by
realigning the molecules inside the drive platter. And then, just
to be absolutely certain, we shred the drive itself and send the metal
chips to a smelter that reprocesses them back into raw metal. Is
that part overkill? Probably; but that's why we are confident
that when we say we destroy the data on a drive, we really destroy the
data on that drive.
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Sound
like a cheesy 1980's B movie starring Bruce Campbell? In reality
there are real dangers associated with the disposal and recycling of
computers and other electronics. For example, not recycling your
computers can make baby Unicorns cry*. Or there is the real danger of
lead. Most of us have heard the horror stories about paint chips and
kids toys but did you know that lead is among the least toxic of the
substances that lie dormant inside your computer?
Take out your periodic table and let's take a trip back to chemistry class.
Barium:
Used in the front panel of the CRTs to protect users from radiation.
Short-term exposure to barium can cause brain swelling, muscle weakness
and damage to the heart, liver and spleen. |
Arsenic:
All of the silicon and gallium used to make PC chips is cut with
Arsenic to change it's semiconductive properties - so technically, all
the silicon in your PC is actually Silicon Arsenide. The danger: dude,
it's Arsenic!
Hexavalent Chromium:
Used for corrosion protection of untreated and galvanized steel
plates and hardener for steel housing. It can cause DNA
damage and asthmatic bronchitis.
Beryllium: is found on motherboards and connectors and is a human carcinogen.
Scary,
isn't it? Again, listed above are just a few elements of concern
when it comes to recycling or disposing of electronic waste.
Everyday use of your computer is not going to expose you to these
elements, but proper recycling will ensure that they don't end up in
the wrong place and endanger us and the environment. |
