RE: What happens to information?
August 28, 2015 at 11:18 am
(This post was last modified: August 28, 2015 at 11:19 am by Tartarus Sauce.)
(August 28, 2015 at 1:04 am)Tiberius Wrote:(August 20, 2015 at 1:47 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote: I think they can overwrite like 36 times over the wiped data - that's an extra option, and if you ask me the best one.
I hope not many people do ask you then, because you are completely wrong. The Gutmann method, which is 35 patterns of overwrites was devised in 1996 when both hardware and software was different. Back then, a number of overwrites would be required to make recovery of data highly unlikely. However these days you only need one pass of writing zeroes over the data to make recovery of it highly unlikely.
Even Gutmann himself admits as much. Indeed, people were never supposed to use all 35 patterns of overwrites anyway; they were supposed to select a subset based on the hardware they were using, so the "35 pass" thing is entirely bogus.
So yeah, if you want to irreversibly delete your data, do a single overwrite of zeroes. Anything more is overkill.
Back in 2008 researchers did a single pass overwrite of a hard drive containing a few files. They sent the hard drive to three top data recovery companies and asked whether they could recover the data. All three refused to even take a look, because they knew it would be impossible: http://www.hostjury.com/blog/view/195/th...unaccepted
I'm a tech nub so excuse me for my ignorance, but what's the difference between a pass overwrite and a normal overwrite (the typical "data delete" where the markers are switched to empty instead of occupied)?
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