Re: how to sweep hard disk of confidential data
You guys are all overlooking the obvious.
All that is required to completely destroy every bit of data on
a disk drive so that it cannot possibly be retrieved, is to
make sure the drive is completely filled with absolutely vital
data that has not been backed up anywhere. That will guarantee
with 100% certainty that it will all be destroyed in an "accidental"
disk crash, so thoroughly that even the FBI and the Air
Farce intelligence lab working nights and weekends with an
electron microscope could recover it.
I can't believe you guys actually work in IS...
On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 19:56:56 -0600, "Paul E Condon"
<pecondon@mesanetworks.net> said:
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2004 at 08:59:38PM -0400, Silvan wrote:
> > On Sunday 18 July 2004 06:52 pm, Doug Holland wrote:
> >
> > > If the answer is yes (usually we're talking about government contractors
> > > with classified data), then the only answer is to physically destroy the
> > > hard disk's platters.
> >
> > Yeah, and I guess at that you'd have to *really* destroy the platters.
> > Cutting a hard drive in half with a bandsaw is fun, but it sounds like these
> > guys might be able to recover something from it even at that.
> >
> > I guess you'd have to melt it down.
> >
>
> Probably not. You only have to heat the platter to a temperature above
> the Curie point of the ferromagnetic material that coats the
> platter. This is usually a few hundred degrees C below the melting
> point. The information is stored in the remanent magnetization of the
> coating on the platter. Above the its Curie point, the material
> becomes paramagnetic and is incapable of retaining remanent
> magnetization and therefore incapable of storing information.
>
> But this is a temperature well above what is necessary to turn all the
> plastic parts of the disk drive into noxious vapor.
>
> --
> Paul E Condon
> pecondon@mesanetworks.net
>
>
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