Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread peterhaas

> As a physicist working for the US Navy at a time well before the IBM
> peecee appeared, let alone Windows, we wanted to use the computers on
> Minuteman missiles that were being decommissioned. The idea was that
> everyone in the laboratory could have a machine on his desk as opposed to
> using a dumb terminal or flexowriter attached with an RS 232 pair to the
> big machine. Plenty of talent was available to handle the software.
>
> What a great idea that was not to happen.

A number of those were sold on the used market to all-comers.

Sometime, our government has NO IDEA that which is "strategic" and that
which is "surplus".

I kid you, not.



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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread Doug McNutt
At 15:49 -0700 5/15/12, Bruce Johnson wrote:
>
>Gotta love Wikipedia! I clicked on the 'srm' link in the above article to find 
>this helpful suggestion:
>
>"The US government recommends complete physical destruction of hard disk data 
>surfaces to guarantee secure data erasure. Presumably, this can be 
>accomplished by abrasion, or by a small amount of thermite ignited over a 
>large, well-ventilated pot containing sand."
>

As a physicist working for the US Navy at a time well before the IBM peecee 
appeared, let alone Windows, we wanted to use the computers on Minuteman 
missiles that were being decommissioned. The idea was that everyone in the 
laboratory could have a machine on his desk as opposed to using a dumb terminal 
or flexowriter attached with an RS 232 pair to the big machine. Plenty of 
talent was available to handle the software.

What a great idea that was not to happen.

It appeared that the very special disks, that were needed for any kind of 
operation, once had targeting information on them that nobody knew how to erase 
with certitude. They got crushed along with the computers.


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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread Bruce Johnson

On May 15, 2012, at 2:53 PM, irrational John wrote:

> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method#Criticism where they
> quote Gutmann himself criticizing the simple-minded way it is
> typically used.

Gotta love Wikipedia! I clicked on the 'srm' link in the above article to find 
this helpful suggestion:

"The US government recommends complete physical destruction of hard disk data 
surfaces to guarantee secure data erasure. Presumably, this can be accomplished 
by abrasion, or by a small amount of thermite ignited over a large, 
well-ventilated pot containing sand."

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread irrational John
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:08 PM,  wrote:
> One wipe is really enough though, but standards are standards
> unfortunately :/

Perhaps. But this 35 pass nonsense is not even a proper standard. It's
more of an intellectual excise built around drive technologies.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method#Criticism where they
quote Gutmann himself criticizing the simple-minded way it is
typically used.

"In the time since this paper was published, some people have treated
the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of
voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a
technical analysis of drive encoding techniques."

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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread peterhaas

> The macintel list seems to be the one intel-based LEM list with decent
> traffic.

Pretty soon non-Ivy Bridge Intel Macs (and the Hack clones of pre-Ivy
Bridge) will go the way of the others, too.


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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread Bruce Johnson

On May 15, 2012, at 11:42 AM, peter wrote:

> When I first got my G4, from a coworker in 2001, he coldn't find the system 
> disk for about a month and a half. By then, I had, been using it, and didn't 
> want to do a nuke and pave.  I still find his junk files now and then on my 
> tiger partition.  So I will be glad to have a clean start this time.
> 
> Thanks for the reassurance about the drives though.
> 
> As an aside, since the macpro list is dead, and the prices are comming down 
> on the first models, and they are loosing apple support with mountain lion, 
> they are starting to turn into LEMs, is this where we should discuss issues 
> with them?

The macintel list seems to be the one intel-based LEM list with decent traffic.

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread peter
When I first got my G4, from a coworker in 2001, he coldn't find the system 
disk for about a month and a half. By then, I had, been using it, and didn't 
want to do a nuke and pave.  I still find his junk files now and then on my 
tiger partition.  So I will be glad to have a clean start this time.

Thanks for the reassurance about the drives though.

As an aside, since the macpro list is dead, and the prices are comming down on 
the first models, and they are loosing apple support with mountain lion, they 
are starting to turn into LEMs, is this where we should discuss issues with 
them?

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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread Bruce Johnson

On May 15, 2012, at 9:55 AM, peter wrote:

> 
> My understanding is that this writes 0s then 1s alternately to every drive 
> sector for 35 passes. As this is way more than years of normal ussage would 
> do, what can I expect for drive life out of these things.  

If the drive lives through this it's probably a good drive...at this it's 
better than my first PowerPC mac, an old G3 that was decommissioned from 
Motorola back in the 90's...they simply removed the drive (sled and all, 
dammit!) and tossed it in a big shredder.

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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Re: 35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread antique280
Those standards are suspect to start with, but you should be fine. I've done it 
for my employer on machines that haven't had a disk failure in years, which is 
unusual seeing as they're HP :P

One wipe is really enough though, but standards are standards unfortunately :/

- Original Message -
From: peter 
To: g3-5-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, 15 May 2012 16:55:42 - (UTC)
Subject: 35 pass erase

Part of this needs to invoke the 1 step removed rule, but partly it is a 
general question as well.

I have purchased my first intel, a MacPro 3.1 on eBay.  There has been some 
delay in the shipping because the origional owner wanted to be sure of 
security, and ran a 35 pass erase on both HDDs, from the leopard install disk. 
One drive is the origional and the other is a 1TB.

My understanding is that this writes 0s then 1s alternately to every drive 
sector for 35 passes. As this is way more than years of normal ussage would do, 
what can I expect for drive life out of these things.  

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35 pass erase

2012-05-15 Thread peter
Part of this needs to invoke the 1 step removed rule, but partly it is a 
general question as well.

I have purchased my first intel, a MacPro 3.1 on eBay.  There has been some 
delay in the shipping because the origional owner wanted to be sure of 
security, and ran a 35 pass erase on both HDDs, from the leopard install disk. 
One drive is the origional and the other is a 1TB.

My understanding is that this writes 0s then 1s alternately to every drive 
sector for 35 passes. As this is way more than years of normal ussage would do, 
what can I expect for drive life out of these things.  

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