On May 19, 2005, at 9:33 AM, P. J. Alling wrote:
Ok, so you've got your CF card, you copy the images from the card to you hard drive and create a CD/DVD/whatever backup. Delete all the files on the card and the data is still the still recoverable. Suppose you want to clean the card completely. I haven't been able to find a utility to do that. Even a "full format" in DOS seems to just do a fast format, (rewrite the FAT table). Has anyone found such a beast or will I have to write one myself?
Yes it is a paranoid question, on the other hand these are paranoid times, and so few people seem to realize that.
A "secure erase" command generally is implemented to do a write of "0" (or random) value to every location on the volume at least three times.
Most implementations of the format command for flash media just rewrite the file directory information and map bad blocks to maximize the lifespan of the media. Flash media has a limit to the maximum number of writes that can be performed reliably, the implementors want to minimize unnecessary writes.
Godfrey
