Recovery from magnetic storage Re: s/forget passphrase for/cause permanent destruction of/

[Matthew Astley]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 11:14:45PM +0000, Adrian Midgley wrote:
> On Sunday 18 August 2002 21:33, you wrote:

> > Completely different.  You'd have to explain why you encrypted data
> > rather than securely deleted it.  The only valid reason IMO is to
> > access again.
> 
> Well ... I gather that various devices can recover data from a hard drive 
> even after it has been deleted and the inodes over written a few times.

Yes, secure deletion is hard. More than you need to know 9-) is
available at

  http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

I should let Peter answer questions if there are any.

> So perhaps one should avoid having sensitive data written to the
> disk at all in clear.
> 
> Hence an entirely legitimate reasons for having encrypted the data,

Ah, interesting approach.

However if you have data which doesn't need encrypting per se, it's
hard to imagine why you would need to securely erase the disk rather
than just destroy it. Are we talking about recycling of obselete but
still useful desktop machines?

I've been known to "rubber glove" computers on occasion, with
permission, to try to recover documents deleted by accident.

If it had to go beyond software though, I would a) suggest typing the
thing in again and b) go to a specialist, before considering buying
and learning to use MFM kit. I'm sure it would be interesting and fun,
but it seems a little extreme!


Matthew  #8-)