So is this a hard drive?

Identifying equipment in our industry can often be a challenge for people that don’t work in it. To be fair things like hard drives are usually out of sight contained inside engineered cases to keep them safe from non-techie people, whether it be a portable chassis, desktop, laptop, server or a NAS (network attached storage in case you wondered). We’ll cover a NAS on another episode.

So it is probably no surprise that a lot of assumptions are made as to what things are when they are taken apart and what you shoudl do with them. So watch Captain Christian’s latest vlog to learn a really simple tip to help you identify your odd bits of technology hardware which are laying around your workplace or home, and what YOU should do with it.

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For those who don’t want to watch, here is the story this week…

Episode 46: Is this a hard drive?

Hi, I’m Christian from “Northstar IT” and this week I’ve got a little IT tip for you…

So this week a client of mine asked about a couple of bits of technology that she’d found lying around in her office and she wanted to check what to do with it.

She said to me:

“I found a couple of old hard drives sitting in a desk that I was having a clear out of and I wanted to check with you what we should do with them?” So I said “Well, that’s easy first of all we need to take them in and destroy the data that’s on the drive making sure that there’s no risk that if someone tried to maliciously access that drive that there could be any sensitive data on it and then you’re taking your responsibilities under GDPR seriously and do remember just because we’re not part of the European Union anymore GDPR has been adopted into UK law.”

So then she pops up in front of me and shows me these two boxes and I said “Well that one is a hard drive and needs to be destroyed and then we’ll send it off for recycling.” Then I pointed at this and I said “This, however, is not a hard drive.” And she said: “How do you know that?” And I said: “Well in fairness usually there would be a plastic plate on the front that would have a couple of logos on it that will give it away, but I’ll give you the fact that that’s not there but if you pay a little more closer attention perhaps put your glasses on and just read the label you’ll find on it, it says what it is is a DVD drive. Not a Hard Drive.”

“Oh” – she said. “I think I’ve made a bit of a boo boo there.”

So next time bearing in mind technology can be a bit of a minefield to those who are not in the industry, just remember if in doubt read the label!”

Until next time!

Is this a hard drive? IT Support Episode 46