Werner Koch wrote: > You cannot clear a modern drive using external software! It doesn't > matter what validated software algorithm you use. Drives may reorder > sectors on the fly, they use read and write caches and do all kind of > tricks to squeeze out more performance. There are even solid state > buffers so that sometimes things won't get written to the platters at > all. > > After all there is software between you and the magnetics. That > software needs to allow you to do what you want but it properly won't. > > Sure it is not easy to get the data directly from the platters but there > are enough labs which can do that. If you want to protect against this, > plain physical force is the way to go. It is pretty easy to open a > drive case and use a hammer to break the platters into small pieces. > The last time I swung my hammer onto an opened drive, it looked as if > the platters were made up of ceramic substrate: a lot of small pieces > hit my safety goggles. That won't be an easy puzzle to solve. > > > Shalom-Salam, > > Werner
I hate to tell you this, but the F.B.I. Computer Forensics Laboratory has successfully recovered data from a drive, where the platters were shot multiple times with a shotgun. The only sure way to make sure no one can recover your data is to put it into a blast furnace (this would be hot enough to melt the whole thing into a puddle, and would cause substantial mixing between the ferro-magnetic alloy and the titanium internal structure. Regards, Chris _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
