How much does it cost to shred hard drives?

Posted in Blog

Glenn Laga

Like any service, multiple factors are involved in calculating the cost of shredding hard drives. In fact, it’s fairly straightforward math with 5 key variables that determine the shred cost per drive.

Cost factor 1: Onsite or offsite?

The first decision is to determine if the hard drives should be shredded on site.  Are you comfortable with the risk of shipping the drives to an offsite location for shredding? Onsite shredding, where a mobile data destruction truck comes to your facility, is more costly but far more secure.

Cost factor 2: Quantity

Like anything else in purchasing, bulk and contractual agreements drive down costs. The flat cost to dispatch a shred truck with a driver and technician to a site is the same no matter how many drives are waiting for data destruction.

Small quantities of hard drives (25 or less) to be shred onsite can be very costly…as high as $40 per drive. Ratchet down the cost per drive down by merely adding more drives to be destroyed.

Cost factor 3: Equipment

Quality and maintenance of the equipment is a significant factor. This includes both shredder and truck age, model, capacity (volume and speed), reliability and upkeep. Putting one key maintenance aspect in focus, the teeth of the shredding equipment must be sharpened regularly to cut through the hard drives. For SSD shredders, although the drives are smaller, the pulverized particle size is so small that the teeth have infinitely more rotations increasing the frequency and diligence of maintenance.

Cost factor 4: People

On a Guardian Data Destruction mobile shred truck, you’ll typically have a driver and a technician. They’ll work together to ensure that the job is done correctly starting with the pickup, all the paperwork and throughout the actual data destruction process. It’s imperative that the workers touching your data-laden devices are qualified. In fact, it’s essential. For our crew, that means workers that are experienced, NAID AAA certified, bonded and have completed a thorough background check. They’re also trained to work with the client’s onsite crew in a professional, courteous manner and follow secure protocols that are set with each shred job.

Cost factor 5:  The organization

Although you may see two guys and a truck backing into your loading dock, there’s an entire organization that supports their job function. This includes back office, multiple insurances, PPE and ongoing professional, safety and OSHA training for the crew.

There is also our centralized dispatch and scheduling team that coordinates our mobile hubs across the US and our project team that issues, collects and reviews the critical paperwork that confirms audit, certificate of data destruction, certificate of recycling and asset transfer for your chain of custody records. For our offsite shred, erasure, degaussing and more projects, our technicians and warehouse staff that perform the same functions as our onsite crew but also handle the shipping and receiving of goods from end users, our ITAD and VAR partners, downstream recyclers and lease returns.

Total cost of shred

Taking into account these five cost factors, hard drive shredding can range from less than $5 to $25 each. We can help you figure out smart strategies that can reduce the cost of hard drive shredding while maintaining the highest possible level of compliance and safety. Start with our next blog:  8 tips to drive your hard drive shredding cost down.

Or, contact us to walk through options that work within your budget without sacrificing quality or increasing risk.