Re: [MLUG] favorite shredder utility

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> > People with the right tools can extract the bits that were contained
> > several times back. Paranoid people usually rewrite the drive something
> > like seven times.
>
> I'd just hit it with a sledgehammer instead!  ;-)

That works to, espcially if you burn it ofter smashing it. For incredibly
sensitive data or a dead drive that would be the default method of
erasure. I have thought of putting sensitive drives inside of a cremation
furnace with some sort of door switch that'd fire the drives should an
unauthorized person enter the room.

> Seriously though, how is the information about previous states of bits
> stored on the drive?  It would seem to imply that the drive has a much
> greater capacity than we usually think -- it can hold the current
> information and also past information.  But how?

It's just a property of the magnetics. Because of imperfections the right
people with the right tools can sometimes retrieve past states of the
drives data. I'd not be surprised to find out they have drives that make
some use of these properties but I think optical holographic drives
probably capture most of that type of research.
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