How to Properly Recycle Your SSD
Pound it? Degauss it? Zero it out? Not quite.
Recycling a solid state drive includes securing a couple of things: to ensure your data cannot be retrieved and to properly dispose your SSD.
A solid-state drive may look on the surface just like a hard disk drive, but it uses a different storage technology, and that means you can’t recycle it the way you recycle an old HDD.
Recycling an SSD is a two-fold challenge. First, you need to make sure that nobody can access your data. This gets even more complicated if your SSD has died and you cannot mount it to encrypt or erase the data.
Second, you need to safely dispose of the hardware parts of your SSD without damaging the environment, and preferably in a way that enables them to be reused. In other words, you can’t just throw it into the trash bin.
Recycling an SSD is more challenging than recycling an HDD, but once you break the whole process down into steps, it all gets easier. Start with the data.
Step 1 – Encrypt It
If you want to recycle an old SSD that still works, you want to make sure that the data on it cannot be accessed by anyone by any means. But if your SSD is dead and won’t mount, you can skip to Step 2.
Perhaps you have zeroed out HDDs in the past before recycling them. Reformatting a drive by rewriting zeroes on it using a disk erasing tool remains a common practice for those who want to dispose of a working HDD. But this method isn’t effective for an SDD, as advanced data recovery tools could still access the data. Erasing the data and then reformatting is equally useless.
The safe way to do away with the data on an SSD is to encrypt it and then reformat the drive. Use a full-disk encryption method available across operating systems, often as built-in software, such as Windows’s BitLocker. This makes the data on the SSD unrecoverable without the encryption key, which only you will know.
After encrypting the SSD, use any drive management tool to reformat it. Most operating systems have this type of tool built in.
Step 2 – Shred It
To destroy the data on a dead SSD, you have to physically destroy the drive. You can also choose to destroy it even if you have already encrypted it, for peace of mind. But you have to do this the right way.
Inside its chassis, an SSD looks like a set of memory chips. After all, an SSD doesn’t use moving parts to store data but relies instead on flash storage. This makes the usual methods of destroying an HDD inefficient or even useless.
You can’t apply a strong magnet to your SSD to degauss it like you can an HDD because the former doesn’t store data magnetically. You can drill holes into your SDD to damage it, but you may not damage all the chips. Someone with a lot of patience (and an evil bend) may still recover your data.
You could remove the chassis from your SSD and pound the memory chips with a hammer, but why go to so much trouble and make such a mess when you could shred it instead? But don’t even think about simple shredders. You need an SSD shredder or rather, an SSD shredding service if you can find one locally, unless you have nothing better to do with a few thousand dollars.
Okay, let’s be honest. You don’t really need an SSD shredding service, though having access to one can be useful, especially if you’re responsible for recycling SSD drives for your organization. The (much) cheaper alternative is to disassemble your SSD any way you can and methodically pound it with a hammer, making sure no memory chip remains intact.
It may take a while, but if your SSD just died on you, it may help you vent your rage.
Step 3 – Send It to a Recycling Center
Destroying your SSD drive may make it difficult to recycle. There may be some local recycling centers that still want to take what remains of your SDD in, but you’d probably have to look hard for them. You have much higher chances to recycle an intact SSD, though.
Manufacturers, as well as local recycling centers, may run programs that enable you to easily recycle SSDs. Apple is well-known for its recycling centers, which are after all necessary since Apple sells Macs with an integrated SSD which cannot be removed in any simple way.
But is there any data risk to sending your old SSD to a recycling center? If you have encrypted your SSD and reformatted it, there should not be any. For the most anxious of us, repeating the process, that is, re-encrypting and then reformatting the SSD again can eliminate all your doubts.
In a world where few companies can afford to ignore environmental concerns, more and more brands are trying to implement effective strategies for recycling old computer components. But then different brands have different recycling policies, and they may not all be straightforward.
You may want to start first with the manufacturer, as they are the most likely to have a recycling policy in place. For SSDs built into laptops or branded desktops, check also with the computer brand, e.g. Apple, Dell, or HP. These policies may be limited to certain regions, and you may have to ship the SSD to a center at your own expense.
The advantage of recycling an SSD this way is that you may be entitled to a discount or else get some other perk from the manufacturer.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, recycling your SSD isn’t so difficult or time-consuming. Once you encrypt your data to protect it, you can send your SSD away without losing any sleep. Destroying your SSD is only optional unless, of course, you can’t encrypt it.
After that, it’s simply a question of disposing of it in the best way possible, which, depending on the SDD maker and your location, may mean sending it to a manufacturer’s recycling center or dealing with it in the same way you deal with any other electronics.
