RE: [Nolug] Why geeks don't wipe hard drives...

From: John Souvestre <johns_at_sstar.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:25:38 -0500
Message-ID: <00d801cbea6a$06511080$12f33180$@sstar.com>

Hi Ron.

>> If you are planning on selling them or giving them away, then a 1 pass
>> wipe isn't really protecting your data from anything...you're gonna
>> need to spend waay more than 3 hours to do a "secure" wipe ;)
>
> And that's a myth.
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html#Epilogue
>
> Read the further epilogue: '"A good scrubbing with random data will do
> as well as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true
now.'
>
> So, a single pass writing random data is all that's necessary.

The NSA would like you to believe that. :)

I've played with magnetic recording a bit in the past, mainly with mag tape.
I could see the effects of a previous image on the current image. I don't
understand why this wouldn't be true for disk, also.

Regards,

John

    John Souvestre - New Orleans LA - (504) 454-0899

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Received on 03/24/11

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