Re: drive wipe

[Steven Alligood]

Brian Beardall wrote:

On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 07:52 -0600, Aaron Toponce wrote:

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:58:15PM -0600, Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:

What does one use to wipe a drive, what application? I have a few that I

need to clean up...and overwrite, to protect patient data.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

Want to contest that the above command securely deletes data? See the
following link, then get back to me: http://16systems.com/zero/index.html

The award money isn't even worth it. The best way would be to have the
FBI or CIA want the data off the disk. They'll spend what ever it takes
to invent the technology to get the data off. After all those two
probably have the best data recovery services this planet has to offer.
I'm not suggesting to do anything illegal to test their services though.

Brian Beardall

I agree, the $500 is not worth the effort for these companies, all of which will charge at least that for a Norton undelete level of recovery. The drive itself is only designed to read the most powerful magnetic impression, not the lower level remains of old data. A truly high end firm, like the CIA or FBI would remove the platter from the drive housing and use special equipment to read the differences under those zeroes. The challenge is unrealistic, and in the end they will claim they proved themselves right without any reality being involved.

This goes to the basic question, "What is your data worth to someone else?"





-Steve

if it is your workstation hard drive at home, with your personal email and checking account data, all zeroes are more then sufficient, since there are easier ways to get that data that low level recovery. If it is corporate secrets worth millions to your company, then a full burn with a physical nail through the platter would be very good security. If the drive had government secrets, possibly worth billions, then incinerate the drives. Do the effort required to secure the data to the level of it's potential value to someone else, whether it is a hard drive, Sally Secretary, or any type of security.

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