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A business built on breaking stuff

By Alex Green April 2, 2016 3 min read

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A business built on breaking stuffResource 1 helps dispose of computer hard drives, files

Two hard drives, one with a hole punched through it, and one with bullet holes, would still contain retrievable data.

Anthony Mundis is vice president of logistics at Resource 1.

Chuck McDonald, president of Resource 1 Electronics, prepares to shred a hard drive.

A hard drive falls into the shredder at Resource 1.

Hard drive bits are packaged into light bulbs as marketing material for Resource 1 Electronics.

Bits of hard drives fill a bin Friday after they're shredded.

Breaking stuff is just more fun.

And it’s even better if you can make money doing it – which makes Chuck McDonald one of the luckiest guys around.

McDonald is president of Resource 1, a company based in a warehouse off Hamill Road in Hixson. Resource 1 specializes in destroying (not just breaking, but obliterating) old computer hard drives in the name of security.

It goes something like this: You bring Resource 1 a computer or an old hard drive with sensitive information stored on it, and McDonald and the gang put your hard drive into a German-made, state-of-the-art, hard drive-eating machine, which in a few seconds, spits out the tiny, fingernail-size remains.

And why? Because hard drives, especially those used by banks, insurance agencies and hospitals, among others, are full of sensitive customer information. And hard drives are really hard to destroy.