There is a buzz regarding the potential problem associated with data stored on the hard drives of copiers and how it can easily be obtained from copiers coming off lease or sold through surplus operations. I'd be interested to hear what how folks are meeting this potential problem.

I would suggest finding out who your copier rep. is for your university and have them stop and see you. I had our copier rep. stop and he said each company's copier's are different as how they store this information. Here at ISU we have Ricoh copier's. He said that the only ones you need to be real concerned with are the digital copier's. He said where the information is stored is if the copier has a document server or scanner. Just making normal copies does not store any information. He showed me how to clear the machine. But I guess with Ricoh's you need an option called HDD. If you don't have HDD then there is no hard drive. So nothing to worry about. He said Ricoh's come from the factory set to dump information after 3 days. But he said that option can be reset by the end user to save information for a longer period of time. He also mentioned that if you take the hard drive out and hook it up to a computer that you can not read it. So you need special equipment to extract information from them. With this being said it can probably be done but takes someone that has the equipment and knows how to do it.

I mentioned to him that no more then what I am getting in reselling copier's it might just be as easy to pull the hard drive. Then send it and the copier to my E-Waste recycler to be shredded. Because without the hard drive the copier does not work. He said you can pull the hard drive then the buyer could purchase a new hard drive for it. So there is another option in trying to resell it.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the info. We have met with our copier vendor and it would seem we're doing what we should to insure compliance for now. On to the next threat!

MSU usually gets Canon's in. I've contacted Canon for a firmware reload software that they have. But they refused to give it to anyone but their own techs. Copiers don't usually sell for that much and its just as easy to pull the hard drive and sell it as is.

I talked to our IKON rep. last week. He told me they have a policy in place now since this has come to light. If the department wants the hard drive pulled they will pull it and give it back to the department. But to put a hard drive back in it, IKON will charge a flat fee of $750.00 to put a new one in. As you mentioned it is hard to sell copier's anyway. When I get one in that does have a hard drive our administration has instructed us to pull the hard drive and destroy it. In doing that now you basically have a useless and unsellable item. So I have decided it would be best to just send the copier straight the to the recycler to have it shredded.