[thelist] [OT] Stolen laptop + Rails tip

Joshua Olson joshua at waetech.com
Thu Feb 16 07:42:27 CST 2006


> -----Original Message-----
> From: T. R. Valentine
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 8:28 AM
> 
> Wiping completely clean (low level format) is what I've typically
> seen. It is extremely difficult to remove user names completely
> without doing so.

Anybody remember when "low level format" meant something else--something
that couldn't be done to IDE drives without completely destroying the drive?

To corroborate this memory I had to look through some old-school websites
[0].

Perhaps a better solution to LLF would be to do a zero fill on the drive,
which means to put zero bits in every data portion of the drive.  [1][2]
This is nice because any residue from files that may be on the platters is
completely overwritten and therefore unrecoverable by mere mortals. 

[0] http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatLow-c.html
[1] http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/SDelete.html
[2] http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave-discontinued/

<><><><><><><><><><>
Joshua L. Olson
WAE Tech Inc.
http://www.waetech.com/
Phone: 706.210.0168 
Fax: 413.812.4864

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