Thanks for that information. I've been doing a lot of disk wiping lately. As it is, the method I'm choosing, which does a random write followed by zeros, takes an awfully long time, yet I was wondering if it was enough, seeing that there are much more stringent ones to choose from.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Klaus Hartnegg Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Freeware in a corporate setting Am 29.01.2015 um 04:35 schrieb Jon Harris: > Does the bank understand that software wiping is not considered safe > for release of sensitive information? Admittedly I doubt the company > receiving the old machines would want to pay the price to recover the > "wiped" data but I am sure it could be done. It would just depend on > how much someone wanted to pay to recover the drive's data. A few years ago I read in a computer magazine, that people tried to restore data after just one single sweep of overwriting a hard disk with zeroes. I think they used a atomic force microscope to find traces of the old magnetization. No chance. Todays hard disks have very reliable head positioning, surface coating where the magnetic fields do not spread much, and the erase coil is wider than the write coil. This might be different with the brand new shingle magnetic recording, but this cannot yet be the case for the harddisks in question here. Another issue is: does the leasing company really want the hard disks back? Usually they resell such PCs with new harddisks, not with the used ones. Klaus
