Richard Lockwood wrote: > Um - what are you suggesting as an alternative?
Read the 2nd URL. In this day and age it *is* important to teach people about electronic security. This "story" completely fails to do so. Excerpt from that URL: Legitimate data recovery firms know that recovering data from a zeroed hard drive is impossible. They will not take the challenge. Lastly, it is noble and just to dispel myths, falsehoods and untruths. Whilst it is true that someone with a scanning electron microscope or the ability to build a HDD and the associated electronics by hand could theoretically recover some data from a wiped disk I think (as you do) it's reasonable to assume that a crook buying HDDs on eBay isn't likely to be operating at this level. I actually applaud the BBC/Which? research that found these un-deleted disks and I grant you that most people are not capable of deleting files properly and need to be educated. However, by promoting myths the problem is made worse. A far better approach would have been to recommend any one of the numerous 'disk wipers' such as: http://www.dban.org/about There are charitable organisations all over the world who can reuse IT equipment and despite caveats the BBC are promoting waste and pollution - the junk will be put in the council bins and go to landfill - not be disposed of properly. > It's more a question of "who would WANT to spend the hours putting a > drive back together just to get access to your £500 overdraft > facility" - ie a question of trouble / worth. Agreed, but as the report showed - destroying them is *hard* and dangerous. Simply erasing them is cheap and a lot safer! *AND* you can donate them to charity. > Me, I reformat them, And this is the flaw in your plan and the BBCs. "Reformatting" does not erase data. The BBC completely failed to say: "You may think that reformatting works - you really need to use a special disk eraser such as dban - otherwise you could find your second hand sale costing you more than you could imagine." > Where's your problem? I hope that answers you? David -- "Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..." - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
