Model: Plextor PlexEraser PX-OE100E CD/DVD Destructor
Manufacturer: Plextor
Provided By: Plextor LLC
Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. According to some estimates, more than 9 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2005 alone. This number is slowly going down, thanks in part to people shredding their documents before disposing of them. However, criminals have responded by going high tech, pulling personal information from discarded CD's and DVD's.
There are a number of ways to prevent criminals from reading your discarded discs. The simplest way is to scratch the surface of the disc. This will prevent most drives from reading it, but the recordable layer, and your data, is still in tact. Using a microwave is another popular solution. While this causes the disc to spark, creating a pretty cool light show, it tends to make your microwave smell awful. The best solution is to shatter the disc or put it through a shredder. The down side here is that the dye in recordable media can leak out, damaging the environment.
Plextor has taken another approach to this with their PlexEraser technology. Originally introduced on their PX-755A and PX-760A series of drives, PlexEraser destroys the data on CD-R and DVD±R media without physically damaging the disc itself. To do this, it uses the drive's laser beam to "re-record" over the lead-in and data sectors, rendering the disc unreadable and unrecoverable.
Earlier this year, Plextor announced the PlexEraser PX-OE100E. Building upon the technology introduced on the PX-755A and PX-760A, this stand alone unit features faster full erase times, a laser optimized for longer life and support for CD-RW, DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media. Best of all, the PX-OE100E does not require a PC. Simply plug it in, pop in a disc and your data is automatically destroyed.
