How are you guys handling secure disposal of old hard drives and servers?

We just finished upgrading a bunch of old office equipment laptops, a couple of servers, and a stack of hard drives that have been sitting in storage for years.

Honestly, the hardware replacement part was easy. The disposal part? Not so much.

My main concern isn’t even environmental (though that matters too). It’s data security. Even after wiping drives, I still feel uncomfortable just sending them off somewhere without knowing exactly how they’re being handled.

I started looking into certified electronics recycling companies and realized there’s a lot more to it than I thought things like:

• Certificates of Data Destruction
• Serialized tracking of assets
• On-site shredding vs. off-site processing
• Environmental compliance documentation

We recently spoke with a company sts electronic recycling and they emphasized secure data destruction and regulatory compliance, which made me realize how serious this process actually is. It’s not just “drop it at a recycling center” and forget about it.

Now I’m curious how others handle this.

• Do you physically destroy drives yourself?
• Do you trust software wiping?
• Do you always request a certificate of destruction?
• Has anyone ever had issues from improper disposal?
• Is this something small businesses overlook too often?

Would love to hear how other founders / IT managers approach end-of-life equipment. I feel like this is one of those operational details people don’t talk about enough until it becomes a problem.