Wiping is not enough in some cases. With magnetical proximal probe
microscopy one can read residual magnetisation even in low-level
formatted disks.
First wiping with ones and zeroes and then overwriting several times
with (pseudo)random sequences offers better protection.
The optimal solution would seem to use cryptographical files systems,
and enough RAM not to use a swap file/partition.
Since modern RAM supposedly almost operates in the nonvolatile
ferroelectric regime (the next generation of RAM), true paranoids
would probably want ot apply above wiping technique to RAM at each
shutdown.
Arnold G. Reinhold writes:
> On the specific complaint that seems to have started this thread, the
> lack of a wipe option in the file encryption, I would just like to
> point out that wiping the original file when you encrypt it is
> nowhere near enough. Many popular applications, such as MS Word,
> create temp files all over the place. A better approach is to wipe
> all disk free space regularly. This can be easily automated in the
> MacOS using shareware utilities and Applescript.
