You are probably correct, given that current PRML encoding techniques and the given density of magnetic media (both drive and tape). The NIST specification even suggests that a single pass of random data would likely be sufficient (at least for drives, nothing is said of tapes). However it has been indicated to me that following the DoD/NIST specs is the minimum procedure, and they are the experts (not I ... although I like your test approach).
Given the apparent vagaries of tape data placement, job migration has been the only acceptable method (hence the tool was not necessary) albeit a rather lengthy procedure. Unfortunately given human nature, one I'm afraid will be repeated in the future (at least as long as we continue to use tape as and archive/backup method). > It's surprising that such a "necessary" tool has never been written! > Perhaps it's not as necessary as you think. > > Also, you're conflating drives and tapes, so I'll do the same. > > My experience with drive recovery companies suggests that it takes > about 2kUSD to recover a drive. And it's not always successful and it > doesn't always recover all the data. So the data better be worth at > least that much. > > If your attacker is willing to spend $2k per tape to read your data, > then maybe you can afford to destroy the $50 tapes and buy new ones. > Or encrypt the data. > > IMHO, you should attempt to overwrite a tape with zeros then send it to > the recovery company to recover. This test will cost you ~$2k which is > probably less than the development cost of this utility. I'm willing > to bet they won't be able to recover anything. > > Regards, > Thanks for your thinking about this, Paul Davis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
