Some CSE department policies relating to how and what the CSEhelp group does.
Orphaned Hard Drive Disposal
Background
CSEhelp often ends up with hard drives in our possession for which we cannot determine the owner. This can happen because someone brings a large amount of equipment from their space (or from a general public space somewhere in the department) that they want “recycled”, but they may not be the owner, nor know who actually owned and left behind the equipment. In addition, due to the way equipment is used, moved, and stored in unpredictable ways throughout the department, there are occasions when we cannot even determine the source room number for some items.
Similarly with the annual Summer graduate seating area cleanup: in spite of the department staff’s best efforts, prior occupants of offices -- intentionally or unintentionally -- sometimes leave behind equipment that current occupants do not want, nor can they identify the previous owner.
Policy
In order to make a reasonable effort to protect important data from being inadvertently lost, when in possession of equipment for which we do not know the preferred disposition CSEhelp will:
- Remove any hard drives from any computers/towers/laptops.
- Label the drive with as much information as we can figure out (as per above, there are times when we cannot determine owner or even primary room number.)
- Label the drive with the current date.
- Store the drive for one year.
- One year after the drive’s labelled date, the drive is subject to being sent to campus Surplus Sales for destruction, with no further notification or record-keeping.