On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Lee Winter
<lee.j.i.winter@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Aaron Toponce <
aaron.toponce@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 08:59:14AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>> If you want to be safe, you need to overwrite the data several times,
>
> Have anything to back that up? If you're using drives that used the old MFM
> or RLL encoding schemes, and had massive space for bits per linear inch,
> then sure, but on today's drives, with perpindicular encoding, and the
> extremely dense bit capacity, going more than once is silly.
I perform this service for commercial recyclers.
Or in other words, it must be true because the service provided
depends on this being true.
It remains an urban legend as long as there is no proof offered otherwise.
I'm not saying it is true or not, but just that there has never been
a demonstration made public of getting data off drives after
a complete zeroing. So it remains an unknown, and
never demonstrated.
Perhaps if you have military grade secrets to to protect
you'll want any and all methods done to it. They will buy
the whole protection package out of paranoia, the same way
the U.S. has many times overestimated the capabilities
of the USSR in the cold war. It doesn't make it real, it just
makes it a solution to follow in the vein of "better safe
than sorry". You don't want what seems like a solution
today to be overrun by tomorrow's technology, so
go for total destruction.
Personally, my drives are so old when discarded they have
no purpose in reuse, so I don't zero. I use physical
destruction, and it takes only a minute. But out of
paranoia, I can't say publicly how I do it.