There is no empirical evidence to support that theory. If that was the case, higher grades of wipe would never have been created. In a sense, it hardly affects me anyway since I lead the kind of life style that bears scrutiny. That said, innocuous yet sensitive data is a matter of concern to all, including me. For that reason, I will not be changing my decision to use multiple wipes, no matter how long it takes. Even if it is a form of overkill, it is still safer.
Christophe
Not theory. Science.The original research was based on very low density MFM drives and recovering random bits, let alone a complete byte. It's an urban legend.
hard drive wipe urban legend - Google Search
I take a scientific view to what science really is and none of the 'Urban Legend' opinions offered, including some 'supported' by quite extensive 'analysis', that don't actually provide one shred of real data based on comprehensive testing. Take this one for example: You Only Need To Wipe A Disk Once To Securely Erase It It's very well written, quite good 'journalism', but 'science' it is certainly not.
The point is well made, however, that SSDs (with TRIM) behave differently to HDDs and older media and, as we all now know here, multiple wiping an SSD can actually damage it, as can defragmentation.
I do consider Gutmann wipes to be pointless on SSDs, but 'safest' on HDDs, if it even matters?. That's only my opinion though, not science.
Christophe
- - - Updated - - -
One of the best reads I've found about this whole subject, surprisingly (as Wikipedia is hardly a source of real science), is in this Wikipedia article on remanence. (Links to en.wikipedia.org)
Last edited by CMArbres; 11 Mar 2022 at 14:45.
There was a time when the NSA could recover data from a drive that was easy-wiped. But it's not clear that they can do so with any modern drive.
Regardless ... you're not selling the old drive to the NSA. Your buyer won't have the high-tech lab needed for that.
So ... a quick wipe will do.
If, by "easy wipe" you mean a simple HD format, well, anyone can recover data from that situation.
Otherwise, it's just another urban legend. The NSA does not, and has never had, any more sophisticated tools to recover data from a wiped drive than is available on the open market. There are no known cases of actual data being recovered from an overwritten drive. All cases of data recovery are from an HD format where the data was never overwritten.
The NSA uses HDD shredders Like Intimus, Proton or Gladiator.
In a price range from five to hundreds of thousands $$$. Some also print a destruction certificate with a hd picture of the drive destroyed.
I just imagine...If these machines exists... There's a reason...
They exist because of human error and verifiability. That is, people have forgotten to wipe drives that contained sensitive data and you can't simply look at a drive and know that the data was wiped. A shredded device leaves no doubt. For a long time now, the DoD recommends device destruction over multipass wiping. Not because data could be recovered from the wipe (and again, one pass will do) but because it's much easier to verify that the data is no longer accessible.
Quote
