220-1102 Question 522
Single answerPhysical destruction of hard drivesA healthcare clinic is retiring several older PCs that stored patient billing data. The systems use traditional magnetic hard disk drives, and clinic policy requires that the data be made unrecoverable before the drives leave the building for recycling. The office manager asks the technician to choose the BEST disposal method that meets the requirement quickly and reliably. What should the technician do?
- A
Perform a standard quick format on each drive and send them to the recycler
- B
Delete the files, empty the recycle bin, and remove the drives from the PCs
- C
Physically shred or crush the hard drives using an approved destruction process before recycling
- D
Run CHKDSK on each drive and label them as sanitized
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The best answer is to physically shred or crush the hard drives before recycling. In a real-world environment involving sensitive information such as patient billing data, simply deleting files or formatting the drive is not sufficient if the requirement is that the data be unrecoverable. A+ Core 2 expects technicians to understand secure disposal practices, including physical destruction for storage media that is being discarded. This aligns with common industry guidance such as NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1, which identifies destruction as an appropriate sanitization method when media will not be reused and data recovery must be prevented. Physical destruction should be performed using approved organizational procedures and, when applicable, documented through chain-of-custody or disposal records.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A quick format does not securely erase the data on a magnetic hard drive; it mainly removes file system references and prepares the partition for reuse. Data recovery may still be possible with forensic tools, so this does not meet a requirement for unrecoverable data.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Deleting files and emptying the recycle bin only removes normal access to the files through the operating system. The underlying data often remains on the drive until overwritten, which is a common misconception about secure disposal.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Physical destruction such as shredding or crushing is an accepted method for making data on traditional hard drives unrecoverable when an organization requires a high-assurance disposal process. This is especially appropriate when drives are leaving organizational control for recycling and the goal is to prevent any future data recovery.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. CHKDSK checks file system integrity and can identify logical disk issues, but it is not a sanitization or destruction method. Someone might choose this option because it sounds like a disk utility, but it does nothing to securely remove stored data.