Securely delete files...

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:45, kunalvshah at comcast.net said:

> If you are looking to wipe a disk,you can use DiskNuke. Both are sourceforge.net projects.

You cannot clear a modern drive using external software!  It doesn't
matter what validated software algorithm you use.  Drives may reorder
sectors on the fly, they use read and write caches and do all kind of
tricks to squeeze out more performance.  There are even solid state
buffers so that sometimes things won't get written to the platters at
all.

After all there is software between you and the magnetics.  That
software needs to allow you to do what you want but it properly won't.

Sure it is not easy to get the data directly from the platters but there
are enough labs which can do that.  If you want to protect against this,
plain physical force is the way to go.  It is pretty easy to open a
drive case and use a hammer to break the platters into small pieces.
The last time I swung my hammer onto an opened drive, it looked as if
the platters were made up of ceramic substrate: a lot of small pieces
hit my safety goggles.  That won't be an easy puzzle to solve.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


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