I understand the issues with CF card longevity. A secure erase say once
a week is unlikely to noticeably effect the life of my cards anyway.
I'm more likely to lose them before they wear out in any case. I'd
rather find a utility someone else has written to do a secure erase than
write one myself. Shareware is good, Freeware is better. So far the
only place I've been able to find this is Kodak for the 14n/c it seems.
Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
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
--
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
--Groucho Marx
