I was looking at information on this recently and saw the claim that even
if you just re-write a drive with zeros, that will basically assure that
the only way any data could be recovered is if the drive is disassembled
and processed with expensive, specialized equipment. I would tend to
believe this (as I would expect that all the ordinary HD interface would
allow the system to read is the last written value to a particular address
on the drive) but I don't know really know much about hard drives, file
systems etc. Anyone know if this is the case?
If so, that would seem to suggest that that would already protect against
almost anyone but governments and other large, well-funded organizations
recovering data. As such, I'd think that's more than sufficient for the
needs of most ordinary people.
Nick
