[TriLUG] OT: Linux Friendly Laptop Forsale

[Brian Daniels]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 01:40:35PM -0400, Ben Pitzer wrote:
> Not exactly.  Bits can still be picked up from various inodes,
> unfortunately, often enough to piece together an entire file.  Basically,
> the process you describe would have to be done about 6 or 7 times to have
> serious efficacy.

By what?  You have written zeros to the whole disc surface (omitting 
bad/spare block regions, head/track alignment issues, etc).  If you read 
from that sector the drive is going to give you a zero.  We're not talking 
about writing within the context of a filesystem, we're just scribbling 
across the whole user-accessible surface.  There won't be an inode 
structure left to recover bits from.

Again, this is assuming the normal drive electronics.  If someone attaches 
a spectrum analyzer to the drive heads then they can look for data 
directly.  But this is not likely to be a problem unless your drives are 
known to contain very interesting/valuable data that would make them worth 
the effort.


--Brian




 -- 
Question with boldness even the existence of a god;
because if there be one he must approve of the
homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

--Thomas Jefferson, Aug. 10, 1787


Brian Daniels                  bitmage at bellsouth.net
      http://www.eviloverlord.net