April 25, 2011 at 12:38 PM ET
For those of us who are nerds, seeing hard drives demolished is much more exciting than watching monster trucks pummel each other. Google gives us that viewing opportunity with a recent video showing drives being ground almost to powder, or at least to metal-and-plastic bits (so to speak).
Google has posted G-rated video of its data and security centers before, but a recent video, "Security and Data Protection in a Google Data Center," shared on YouTube, is a fascinating look at what happens to hard drives on servers used by the tech giant once those hard drives are deemed to have reached the end of their lives.
At about 3:35 into the 7-minute video, Google shows how the drives are destroyed in a "multi-step process" that includes use of "the crusher," a steel piston that is pushed through the center of the drives, as well as a "drive shredder" that makes anything similar you have at home look like child's play.
The video may reassure customers, or those thinking of going the cloud route, that their data is safe. But still needing more assurance and information is the business of mobile phone location-based data tracking by Google and Apple. Google did say late Friday that customers have the ability to opt out of such tracking, but for many mobile phone users, it's not so crystal-clear. And perhaps a video is in order on that topic.
— Via Business Insider
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