Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Erasing a hard disk easily
From: "Kurt Seifried" <listuser () seifried org>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 04:52:29 -0700
This is off topic. As well the subject line and what most of you are discussing is not "erasing" a hard disk, but rather overwriting the data. No amount of overwriting data will "erase" a disk. To "erase" a disk you need to apply a relatively high magnetic field (like say one... generated by a disk eraser perhaps) and reallign all the magnetic particles on the disk to ensure the data is gone. Simply overwriting the data will not overwrite all magnetic particles. Off track particles, particles in lost sectors/bad clusters, particles in the host protected area (read the ATA spec folks), etc, etc. Again I repeat: no amount of overwriting data on a hard drive will ensure that it is gone. To add to this is the fact that most disk wpiing programs are broken and don't fully wipe the disk (read various vendor reports/etc, sure they're biased but they do contain some truth). Personally I pull the drives, bash them to s**t with a crowbar, wrap them up with some smelly garbage and toss them in a dumpster usually the day before it gets emptied by the trash company. New hard drives are cheap, and giving someone old drives isn't exactly that nice IMHO ("here's something to store your data, it might work for a while, heck if I care"). Now can we please drop this incredibly lame thread. Kurt Seifried, kurt () seifried org A15B BEE5 B391 B9AD B0EF AEB0 AD63 0B4E AD56 E574 http://seifried.org/security/ _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: Erasing a hard disk easily, (continued)
- RE: Erasing a hard disk easily Jos Osborne (Jul 13)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Aditya, ALD [ Aditya Lalit Deshmukh ] (Jul 13)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Maarten (Jul 14)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Darren Reed (Jul 14)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily James Sneeringer (Jul 14)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Larry Apolonio (Jul 14)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Gary E. Miller (Jul 14)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Darren Reed (Jul 15)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Gary E. Miller (Jul 15)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Darren Reed (Jul 16)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Kurt Seifried (Jul 16)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Gary E. Miller (Jul 16)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Aditya, ALD [ Aditya Lalit Deshmukh ] (Jul 13)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Dave Horsfall (Jul 15)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Vincent Archer (Jul 15)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily José María Mateos (Jul 15)
- RE: Erasing a hard disk easily Jos Osborne (Jul 13)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily wszumera (Jul 15)
- Re: Erasing a hard disk easily Maarten (Jul 13)