In most of the security writings I have been studying, the consensus has been to format and write junk to the disk at least four times. This past summer I was working with a client, that was a bank, and I was told that this standard was acceptable OCC - the Federal regulators for the banking industry. Most of the electronic shredders we look at did at least four to six times. David -----Original Message----- From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Technomage Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 10:08 PM To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us Subject: computer forensics question ok, I've been wrangling this question around a while and haven't been able to gain any real answers that make sense (and my knowledge base on this is lacking due to being 10 years out of date). so, here goes: is it possible, given the current understanding of the laws of physics, to so erase a hard drive as to make it virtually impossible to recover ANY data of any usefulness whatsoever (up to and including either a major government or major multinational corporationthrowing huge sums of money at the problem in an attempt to recover)? so far, the only answer I have found is: a conditional no (any or all the data can be recovered, including the previously written data multiple layers deep). is there a correct 9and unconditional) answer for this arguement? --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss