Yeah, some three letter organizations, like .edu, have labs with this type of equipment, but I doubt anyone will cut your phone lines and power, gas you and let you wake up palely loitering on a hillside somewhere if you divulge the information.
I keep saying over and over, if the data is okay for disclosure, just high level format the drive, but if you want the data irrevocably gone, you either sand the platters off or melt that puppy down. Punching two holes in the disk just makes that part unreadable - the rest is readable with scanning tunneling microscopy and other methods. I have seen degaussers that you place the drive in and it sounds like you are shredding the metal, but it's really doing a serious set of EMP bursts to it that leave it non-functional too, but I've never seen any data on whether those can be read by STM. STM has been around since 1988 and has been rather well understood for the last five years, although they keep having breakthroughs. I wouldn't care to guess to what levels a well-funded government organization might have brought the process; not because I fear arrest, but because any close to the mark guess will look like wildly exaggerated foolishness to most and I'd rather be quietly smug than be publicly ridiculed by those that are likely wrong. Being vindicated five or ten years later is just too weak an ego boost. :-) I did correctly predict the present state of communications speeds and computer processing speeds ten years ago, though few colleagues would listen. I even thought up the idea of firing different shades of blue light down a chunk of fiber to create parallel data on fiber optics about two weeks before some very smart people patented the idea (okay, they were at the "look! we did it!" stage whereas I was at the "I bet you a beer you could do this if you had the right stuff" phase.) And now I understand they are presently sending 2^13 shades of blue, upping common single mode throughput 2^13 times. Just wait till it gets affordable (Prediction: Affordable to large corporate institutions in four years, tops, for 2^10) Though I did predict this last recession, I failed miserably to identify Cisco IPO as a "Good" deal, so I may be wrong about STM. But I don't believe it. D. Weiss CCNA/MCSE/SSP2 Not the sharpest pencil, but I can identify which one is without poking myself with it. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Medici [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 6:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: RE: Disk Wiping Utilities Rumor has it that certain three-letter organizations can recover data from disks even after that data has been overwritten as many as five times with five different patterns of data. Allegedly, this is accomplished through the use of special controllers, equipment and software that can: * Position the read/write head slightly out of alignment * Read the analog signal directly from the heads * Filter out previously read signals from an in-alignment read * Amplify and convert the remaining out-of-band signal to data * Repeat the process with the heads moved slightly further out of alignment. Of course, since I've never been associated with any organization that has this capability, I can't say for certain this is possible. Then again, if I did know for certain, it would probably be illegal for me to say anything. I don't know how many disks Dan needs to erase. But a new 20GB hard disk costs less than $100. Two 198g 30-06 rifle cartridges cost about $2.00. Take the old disk out to the rifle range and punch two holes through it. Install the new disk and be done. Heck, you could probably charge office staff for the opportunity shoot-up the disks, and recover $10 to $25 bucks per disk! +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Medici www.dbma.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Warning: I sell IT & Security products, including myself. | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 12:01 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: RE: Disk Wiping Utilities > > > without a doubt. I have seen people retreive deleted files from a HD > that was formatted using DOS utilities. > > > > > > Advanced recovery will still be able to get some data back > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Bassam ALHUSSEIN [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: woensdag 27 maart 2002 21:38 > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Dan Williamson > > Subject: Re: Disk Wiping Utilities > > > > > > I am not sure but I thought that a format then fdisk would do the > job > > .....wouldn't it ??? correct me guys ..plz > > > > Bisso > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Dan Williamson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 12:14 AM > > Subject: Disk Wiping Utilities > > > > > > > > > > > > > I am looking for a good utility to erase all hard drives > > > in a machine to a DOD standard. I would prefer a > > > FREE utility as this is a government agency and I try > > > to keep costs down. > > > > > > I have read that Norton Wipeinfo, BCWipe and > > > several other programs wipe only the known > > > partitions. I need a tool that will wipe EVERYTHING ! > > > > > > TIA > > > Dan > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > <br> > > ______________________________________________________________ > _________________ > This E-Mail was sent with Webmail from http://www.echostation.com. > However, Echo Station, NovaTech Web Services, or any other affiliated > company take no responsibility for the content or appropriateness of > any email sent utilizing this service. > > > >
