UC Davis Information & Educational Technology

UC Davis Cyber-Safety Program: Release of Equipment with Electronic Storage

If you are a computer user within an academic or administrative department on campus, you may have a Technology Support Coordinator (TSC) who is working to secure your system. Before taking any of the security steps listed below, please check with your TSC.

From the UC Davis Cyber-Safety Program Policy:

"All data must be removed from electronic storage prior to being released or transferred to another party. Data removal must be consistent with physical destruction of the electronic storage device, degaussing of the electronic storage or overwriting of the data at least three times. A 'quick' format or file erasure is insufficient."

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About electronic storage

What is equipment with electronic storage?
Equipment with electronic storage includes any equipment (computer disk drives, PDAs, etc.) that contains data.

Why is this important?
Simply formatting or repartitioning a disk drive does not sanitize the data from the drive. In fact, retrieval of this information is trivial with the right tools. When a file is deleted, only the header information which points to the data is removed - the data itself is still present on the drive. Similarly, when a drive is formatted, only the tables that contain the pointers to files are deleted. To be sure that no confidential information is compromised when electronic storage media is released or transferred, a disk wiping utility must be used. Alternatively, a degausser may be used when the data is stored using a magnetic medium (e.g., hard disks, floppy disks, backup tapes). Alternatively, a degausser may be used then the data is stored using a magnetic medium (e.g., hard disks, floppy disks, backup tapes). However, a degausser will typically destroy the read/write drive heads, thus making the drive unusable.

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