Trying to make this more legit/professional, may be full time into it soon

I posted a few ads on craigslist and elsewhere the past few weeks advertising computer and electronics recycling, free pickup for 2 counties, destruction of hard drives, and cash for large loads.
Got a little more business then i expected from it, couple of computer repair shops sold me a lot of parts cheap and couple of computers here and there. Been extremely busy between that and my day job.
Got an email 2 days ago offering 21 computers, 14 laptops, several servers, switches, and 2 large printer/copy machines. It was about 30 miles out of my normal area so they told me if i picked up free i could have it all. Got back with them about a day before i had scheduled to pick up and he asked for an agreement guaranteeing
secure destruction of the hard drives which i had already written up. I basically explained to them all the board would be removed and the remains would be shredded by a local scrap metal proccesser.
This was not good enough they then wanted proof of somekind of insurance, which i do not have since im just doing this on the side and only started 2 weeks ago. I do not want to lose another job like this, seems like it could happen a lot, and im almost 100% sure im getting laid off within the next 7 month.
I would really like to create a legit business with real advertising and become insured or possibly backed by somekind of recycling/data destruction organization.

First off I have never owned my own company before so i have no clue where to begin and is anyone going to sell me insurance if i dont have somekind of hard drive shredder?

take drill, drill couple holes onsite, or offer to remove harddrives and leave them for their own method of disposal.

by the time i told them i had no kind of insurance they were already calling another company didnt even have a chance to tell them i would destroy them on site, i will mention that in my next contract that if neccessary hard drives can be dismantled on site.
Do you guys experience this often or do companies generally take your word for it?

When dealing with sensitive data I doubt people will just "take your word".

call an insurance company about liability insurance and talk about secure destruction of property with them. I would also draft up a piece of paper explaining your process of destruction. Maybe make a video of you explaing the process. tell them you can record the destuction and email it to them and you can even show them the whole breakdown process and just put it on fast forward with numbers on screen for each computer destroyed you can do it just think of a way.

I thought of trying to make a video as well... I think this is something that could quickly be done onsite with a sharp hatchet or chisle

most of my onsurance compan/lawyer/hospital type of pickups have the harddrive removed and or wiped by the time it gets to my hands.

performance bond and insurance. drilling a hole will not stop data from being recovered from a disk. check with a commercial insurer. i would also check with the surrounding competition and see what they are offering for certification. you will want to at least match that.

how about a chop saw and cut them all in half on site all thrown in the same barrel.

as long as any part of the disc remains, it is readable, data can be recovered.

degaussing or shredding are the best. dod over writing software would be next.

most company's want all of the data destroyed, not part of it. the company's that are the most anal about data destruction, normally are aware of the proper means of destruction.

one of the reasons company's insist on some type of certification they approve of is that they have to trust you to destroy that drive and all of the data it contains. no one is going to want you out in their the parking lot ripping apart computers so you can destroy a 1000 drives or more.

one of the reasons i do not sell drives is that i do not want a client to have any doubts about my services. it looks bad if you pick up a few hundred drives to destroy and 2 weeks later you have few hundred drives for sale on ebay or cl. or you always have an ad running to sell drives.

the occasional times i do get good drives, and have permission to re-sell, i dod wipe and then trade to dealers for scrap.

most of the dealers i work with are looking for 15k sas or scsi or the 10 k raptors. or ssd drives. everything else is scrap.

So ure telling me if I remove the boards cut the discs in half and throw the remains in a scrapyard info could still be recovered from them?

Originally Posted by decjr2006

So ure telling me if I remove the boards cut the discs in half and throw the remains in a scrapyard info could still be recovered from them?

yes.