Drive Wiping Good Enough for the DoD
The U.S. Department of Defense has standard procedures for everything (almost), including wiping data from disk drives. A new report from a trade publication suggests the only sure way to prevent data recovery is to take a hammer to your disk drive.
That's extreme and there isn't enough proof to warrant abandoning well designed software that adheres to DoD standards or equivalent for data destruction.
Which? Computing says:
Which? Computing bought eight second-hand hard drives from auction site eBay and found that they still held information that could be confidential. Using free software downloaded from the internet, the computer magazine was easily able to recover 22,000 'deleted' files, including images, music files and spreadsheets.
The Register also takes a different view:
Which? Computing reckons wiping has become unreliable, but experts dismiss this view. "There's lots of software out there that does wiping very well, such as Blanco Data Destruction, and it doesn't cost much," said Harlan Simpson, director of Disklabs.
If the military didn't trust data destruction software, neither would I but I'm not paranoid enough, at least not yet, to abandon tools that have severed many of us well.
Email This!
Digg it!
Sphere it!
Del.icio.us
Reddit!
Newsvine
