Faramir wrote: > Well, I already know why it is not reliable to "securely delete" a file, > I understand the hdd can do the "overwrite" process in the "wrong" place > of the hdd.
Right. > But yesterday I had to defrag my hdd, and that made me wonder: why we > can't overwrite a file, but we still can defrag the hdd? Is there a > hardware feature that allows SO to defrag the hdd? Not really. It's more a question of context. With a defrag, if you successfully rearrange 95% of the affected blocks then you've substantially improved your drive performance. Sure, it'll report that it's done 100%, but who cares, really? With disk overwriting, if you successfully overwrite 95% of your sensitive data, you may still be putting yourself at substantial risk. Especially since it will report that it overwrote all your data. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
