Do Printers have hard drives? Yes

Especially at performance levels that can supply your company’s full staff with networked printing services, today’s Output hardware often includes built-in hard drives that complement the embedded miniature computer at the heart of these devices’ capabilities. These features typically appear on laser printers and on multifunction devices, which may be laser or inkjet-based. If your office printer includes these capabilities, you may benefit from performance advantages – at the expense of increased security concerns.

Securing Your Documents

Many printers designed for multi-user environments incorporate hard drives — traditional platter-based units or flash-memory storage – designed to speed the output of many documents printed at or near the same time. Relieving the need for spooled document retention on individual users’ computers, these drives provide an expedited means of making output data available to printing hardware. Unless you print a configuration page, check the installed options listed on your lease or purchase agreement, or examine the device’s back panel for signs of a drive, you may be unable to distinguish between devices with onboard storage and devices that lack it.

Multifunction Printers

Internal hard drives form a common feature on devices that print, scan, fax and email – multifunction printers, or MFPs – to enable them to coordinate the simultaneous performance of their many functions. Because of the close usage and configuration similarities between these devices and their slightly bigger copier siblings, MFPs target many of the same needs for offices with fewer users and less document traffic than those that use networked copiers. Depending on the performance level, price and intended workgroup size, an MFP may include a hard drive as a standard or optional feature.

Hold and Back Up – Document Security

The inclusion of an internal hard drive enables output devices to offer workgroups the ability to send a document to the printer, hold it for later output and make multiple copies at different times from a saved set of data. Hardware setups that include individual user IDs make it possible for this feature to provide document-access security. On MFP, internal hard drives also support retention of faxed material in the event of a lack of printing supplies.

Security Considerations

When your business decommissions a leased or purchased output device, its hard drive can form a security risk because of the prospect of sensitive data remaining on disk. Along with security provisions to protect these devices while they’re in service, including password protection of Web-based access to your output hardware, you need a security policy to address data destruction when you retire your equipment. Leased printers must be returned in working order, which means you can’t simply destroy their drives. Some printer manufacturers offer a standard or optional data-erasure software product you can use to wipe or overwrite the drives on their devices that include them.

 Drivers Installation

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