On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 14:48 -0500, Nick Cummings wrote: > 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
It may be that a hard drive overwritten with zeroes is resistant to 99% of attackers, but considering the easy availability of software to wipe hard drives more securely than that... it seems a wise precaution. Especially considering that the lower 99% of attackers probably just want to swipe your credit card numbers, while that top 1% might have much more sinister aims, and the resources to accomplish them :-) Dan
