Wow, I would not recommend just a nail, pound the platters to bits then melt the bits.
And the folks who think that memory is 100% overwritten should not get involved in treason or plots to assassinate heads of states. It can hold ghosts of data for a long time. The problem is sorting out the different ghosts, but that is not insurmountable if you are willing to spend the money.
it is kind of like pick-proof locks. If someone can design it, someone can figure out how to pick it.
graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" -----------------------------------
Cotty wrote:
On 20/5/05, Doug Franklin, discombobulated, unleashed:
If that's what they told you, they sold you a load of shite. The
forensic recovery techniques for hard drives rely on the mechanical and
thermal drift of the heads (and therefore tracks) over time. It's
highly unlikely that a series of writes in quick succession would drift
enough to obliterate the excursions that a serious forensic data
recovery effort (read government agency) is going to try to exploit. If you _really_ want to obliterate magnetic recordings, you need to
blast them with nontrivial amounts of magnetic flux. If you're going
to try to obliterate them yourself, you have to use the "obliterate"
software multiple times _over_ _time_.
Doug's right. But more: I have filmed at one of the world's leading information recovery services here in the UK, where they specialise in data recovery.
<http://www.vogon-international.com/>
They have techniques so sophisticated that the managing director told me over a pre-filming cup of nice hot Brownian motion producer (tea) that there is no safe method for burying info on a traditional computer hard drive. He was matter-of-fact about it and said that the only way to be sure was to hammer a large nail through the platters and then burn them!!!
If it's that crucial, replace the drive before selling the computer on ;-)
Cheers, Cotty
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