Patent ID: 8005996

Claim:
A modular drive bay in a network storage system for digitally shredding data, the modular drive bay comprising: one or more removable disk drives, the one or more removable disk drives configured to digitally shred archival data, each removable disk drive comprising: a data cartridge case; a connector; an embedded memory, the embedded memory physically attached to the data cartridge case, the embedded memory electrically connected to the connector, the embedded memory configured to digitally shred archival data; a modular drive bay, the modular drive bay comprising: two or more drive ports, each drive port including a data cartridge connector which mates with the connector to communicate with the embedded memory; a hardware/firmware, the hardware/firmware in communication with one or more application servers, the hardware/firmware receiving a delete request associated with archival data from the one or more application servers and converting the delete request to a digital shred command, the hardware/firmware configured to send the digital shred command to one or more memory blocks in the embedded memory to digitally shred the data.