[DM-MUG] Fwd: Re: [MacLaw] Proper destruction of harddrives, fyi

[Victoria L. Herring]

>
>
>I do forensic recovery for a living. This is an urban legend....
>perpetuated by movies.... like the need to keep a caller on the line for
>some time to have the call traced. All of it is BS, and based on some
>research back in the 1950s when disk drives and media were very, very
>different.
>
>No one, outside the folks in Langly, can recover data from a modern disk
>drive that has been overwritten just once with random data. And even
>the folks in Langly can't do it with any degree of practical success.
>It takes a scanning magnetic microscope just to try it, and you don't
>pick those up at Best Buy on a Visa card.
>
>There are several organizations in the forensic area that have offered
>bounties to ANYONE who can demonstrate such a capability. No one has
>ever come close.
>
>It is possible to "detect" some very small percentage of original bits
>on a disk that has been overwritten with a FIXED pattern (i.e. all zeros
>or all ones) but even in this case, the ability to recover anything
>beyond a few random characters is zero.
>
>Overwrite it once with random data... twice if you are paranoid. Then
>retask the drive or sell it.
>
>Now an OPTICAL disk is a very different matter. It is fairly easy to
>recover large percentage of data from a CD or DVD even after it has been
>cut into pieces.
>
>Victoria L. Herring wrote:
>>  from recent discussion at MUG ref. how to get rid of secure data 
>>on harddrives
>>
>>
>  >> To properly take a hammer to a drive,

-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Travel Research/Photography, 
http://www.JourneyZing.com; Lawyer, Discrimination/Civil Rights, Des 
Moines, Iowa http://www.herringlaw.com; personal blog, 
http://victorialherring.typepad.com/serendipity/