> Once information on a digital media has been overwritten, it cannot be > recreated/restored in any lab. All this talk about electron microscopes > and overwriting in multiple passes is just a load of crap derived from > an old DoD standard. It has no practical meaning. One overwrite is > enough. Please let this ugly rumour die :)
That is not the case. On magnetic drives, the field can spread beyond the region written to by the drive heads, and can be read by a suitably equipped lab. Reports on how effective this is and what methods can be used to destroy the data vary, but it's safe (or rather, it's necessary) to assume intelligence agencies or big companies can do stuff we don't know about. Besides, drives can transparently reassign sectors that go bad, and no mere dd can get to those. If 'they' can take apart the drive or get suitable firmware for it, they can certainly read all the sectors. Even if you assume overwritten data can not be recovered, you would still need to wipe these sectors. On 6/1/05, Diana Eichert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > place drive in front of dirt embankment > position yourself ~100'/30M (you want to get some practice in don't > you?)from the target, hrrrm, drive. > begin target practice, hrrrm, drive cleaning, until drive is thoroughly > destroyed, hrrrm, cleaned. > retrieve spent brass ( you do reload don't you?), hrrrm, drive cleaning > materials Rendering the drive media unreadable to a standard drive won't necessarily render it unreadable to determined forensic annalysis. It requires high temperatures. If you have information valuable enough to spend that kind of money to recover, then the cost of losing the use of a drive is trivial. I don't advocate thermite or an oxy torch to prevent 'them' from getting their hands on my MP3 collection. I wouldn't take the trouble to destroy any of my hard drives because I don't have anything worth spending that kind of money to recover.
