A low-cost, portable, destructive sanitization method for solid state drives (SSDs) is provided. Preferably, an SSD is destroyed by disintegration within a given time period (approximately 30 minutes or less) using a blending device operating at a given peak power, e.g., greater than 450 W. A pulverizing agent may be admixed with pieces of an SSD printed circuit board prior to initiating the disintegration process to increase the number of particle collisions in a processing/blending chamber. The pulverizing agent may also contain moisture that mitigates suspension of processed SDD particles in the surrounding air (when the mixing chamber is opened). The overall process may be video-recorded for compliance purposes.

A shredder is disclosed. The shredder includes a housing having a throat for receiving at least one article to be shredded, and a shredder mechanism received in the housing and including an electrically powered motor and cutter elements. The shredder mechanism enables the at least one article to be shredded to be fed into the cutter elements. The motor is operable to drive the cutter elements so that the cutter elements shred the articles fed therein. The shredder also includes a detector that is configured to detect a thickness of the at least one article being received by the throat, and a controller that is operable to perform a predetermined operation responsive to the detector detecting that the thickness of the at least one article is at least equal to a predetermined maximum thickness.