Data destruction: shredding, drilling, degaussing, incineration; erasing/wiping vs low-level vs standard format; certificates of destruction

When storage devices leave service, the data on them must not leave with them. Deleting files or even formatting a drive does not reliably remove data, and freely available recovery tools can often retrieve it. Organizations therefore choose between sanitizing a device so it can be reused, donated or resold, and physically destroying it so it can never be read. The right choice depends on how sensitive the data is, whether the device has any reuse value and what regulations apply.