At Paper Round we treat all equipment for recycling responsibly and ensure that hard drives in working systems are reformatted to remove data and software. This is part of our standard service and no additional charges apply.
Reformatting a hard drive will make your data and software invisible to any subsequent normal user. It is however possible for a data laboratory or more skilled individual to subsequently recover data. Paper Round therefore offers additional enhanced security options.
Paper Round is able to guarantee the complete and permanent destruction of all your data and software. We issue a Certificate of Destruction to confirm this. We use two alternative options:
Overwriting
Paper Round uses EraserDisk commercial software that overwrites to the US Department of Defence Standards 5220.22-M. This specifies the approach "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify" for clearing and sanitizing information on a writable media.
We select the Long Security Wipe with Format option, which overwrites data six times using four different data patterns, then performs a factory style low level format.
Shredding
This completely destroys the hard drive and with it your data. We recommend that hard drives, either standalone or in systems that cannot boot, are shredded as these are not reformatted as part of the standard service.
Component parts will be recycled.
IT Recycling 
IT Recycling - Data Security
Enhanced Security Options for complete peace of mind