No, and this is the single most common misconception. A factory reset only deletes the index that points to your files. The files themselves stay on the drive until they are overwritten by new data. With free tools that anyone can download, most of those files can be fully recovered in under an hour. A proper wipe overwrites the drive three times, sector by sector, so there is nothing left to recover. This applies equally to a household laptop and a corporate one.

Yes. Every engagement starts with a mutual non-disclosure agreement that covers everything we may see or handle during the wipe. Both sides commit in writing: you to provide the equipment and the legal authority to dispose of it, and Davidsons IT Agency to guarantee that every piece of information seen or heard during the deletion is never spoken about, never shared, and permanently forgotten once the service has finished. This applies equally to a family laptop, an executive's phone, a celebrity's smart home devices, a law firm's backup drives or a corporate fleet. The NDA is countersigned and returned to you, and it stays in effect after the engagement has finished.

Yes. Every device is logged on intake with make, model and serial number, photographed, and tracked through every phase. Chain of custody is documented for the entire process. The deletion itself is performed internally by our certified team, following ISO 27001, GDPR and equivalent data protection regulations. For clients who need it, we provide a data processing agreement, a written method statement, a full audit trail and certificates aligned to DOD 5220.22-M, NIST 800-88, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS or ISO 27001, depending on what your auditor requires.

Sometimes yes, and it is important to be honest about that. For most wipes and sanitizations, the entire process is carried out internally by our certified team under the mutual NDA. For permanent physical destruction or other formats of wiping that require a specialist partner, we engage a vetted destruction company, also under the same NDA. That partner is named and credited on the official certificate for the physical work they perform, and is bound by the same privacy guarantees as we are. The certificate you receive is signed by every party involved, so the full chain is documented and auditable.

Both are available. If you want the device gone for good, we coordinate physical destruction of the drive, either in-house or through our vetted destruction partner, and issue a destruction certificate. If you want it donated, sold or handed down, we wipe it to DOD 5220.22-M standard, verify the wipe, and issue a sanitization certificate. You choose which route makes sense for each device. For enterprise fleets, we can mix both approaches in a single visit and document them accordingly.

Yes, and they use a different method called cryptographic erase. Instead of overwriting the drive repeatedly, the encryption key that protects the data is destroyed, which makes everything on the drive mathematically unrecoverable in one step. This is actually the strongest form of wipe available today, and it is what we use on every modern SSD and Apple Silicon device. It is also what makes a certified wipe of an executive's MacBook possible without ever needing to open the case.

The certificate is yours, and it can be transferred with the device. If you sell or donate, we can print a second copy addressed to the new owner, listing the drive serial and the wipe standard. That way the new owner has proof the device is clean, and you have proof that you did the right thing. This is especially important for anything donated to a charity, school or second-hand shop, and it is standard practice for businesses disposing of fleet hardware.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For laptops, phones and tablets, the drives are usually soldered or integrated, so the wipe happens in place. For desktop towers and NAS boxes, we can pull the drives, wipe them individually, and either return them to you or coordinate physical destruction, depending on what you want. Every drive gets its own line on the certificate, so there is no ambiguity about what was wiped.

Not once we finish. Every email, VPN, chat, file-sharing and single-sign-on session is explicitly signed out and revoked before the wipe. This includes anything cached in the browser, any autofill credentials, any saved tokens, and any device pairings. Your IT or security team will get a written record of the sign-outs on request, so they can close out the device on their side as well. This is critical for departing executives and any business that must prove what happened to a device after a staff change.

Yes. Executive departures, board member device returns, corporate fleet retirements, office moves and M&A hardware disposals are all part of what we do. We handle the NDA, the sign-outs, the wipe, the verification, the compliance documentation and the certificate. For a fleet, we work through the devices in batches and issue a single consolidated report alongside the per-device certificates. Everything is auditable, and everything is documented.

Cameras, audio recorders, drone storage and memory cards are treated exactly like computer drives: DOD 3-pass overwrite or cryptographic erase, depending on the medium, followed by a verification scan. We understand that raw media often contains unreleased footage, private client material, unedited interviews and draft cuts that must never surface. The certificate lists the card or drive serial, the standard used and the date, so the studio has a defensible record of every piece of media that was destroyed.

A phone or tablet is usually under an hour, including verification. A laptop with an SSD takes about the same. A mechanical HDD in a desktop or NAS takes several hours per drive because of the three-pass overwrite, so multiple drives are usually done over a day or two. For an enterprise fleet, we agree a schedule that fits around your operations and provide daily progress reports. We always give you a written time estimate before we start, and we never leave a device half-wiped.