Side Street Technology Blog

At Side Street Technology, we work with you to ensure your data wiping standards are met and your company’s intellectual capital will not be compromised on your used laptops.

Our standard method is to simply reformat and reimage the disk with a new install of Microsoft Windows or other operating systems.  For most companies, this method is sufficient and allows the unit to be sold without your data.

For companies that want a more secure method on their used laptops, a data wipe is necessary.  To put it in simple terms, a data wipe writes 1 and/or 0s over the entire disk.  Our first option is to offer a single pass.  However, if you a single pass of 1s and/or 0s has been completed, real hackers can still obtain your data because the information is still magnetized on the drive. For customers, that need a more secure data wipe, multiple passes of 1s and/or 0s can be made on the disk.  The US Department of Defense (DOD) recommends either 3 times or 7 times, or even the Gutmann recommendation of 35 times.  To reach this number of data wipe passes is quite time consuming and expensive.  At  Side Street Technology, we typically offer a 1 pass data wipe if necessary for your used laptops.