A New Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives

RockDoctor writes "Stories about 'wiped' hard drives appearing on eBay (and other channels) and being stuffed with personably-identifiable data are legion; rarer are spy planes having to land on enemy territory, but it happened in 2001 to a US spy plane over an un-declared enemy (China, and that's a topic in itself). Dark Reading reports the development of a technique to securely wipe a hard drive in seconds, and which is safe for flying. (The safe for flying criterion rules out things like fun with packing the drives in thermite. Also thermiting the drives may not erase the platters to the standard required, which is moderately interesting itself."

Comments

Re:New technique?

[ChronoReverse]

Powerful magnets do rather little to wipe hard drives (besides, there's a fearsomely powerful permanent magnet inside HDs already). I heard about this test where magnets powerful enough to bend the platters still weren't able to wipe the data off.

Re:Wrong word?

[SillyWilly]

Yes you are unware.

According to the OED:

"A vast host or multitude (of persons or things): freq. of angels or spirits, with reminiscence of Matt. xxvi. 53."

Or see definition 3 here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=legion

If it doesn't involve fire arm...

[Lead Butthead]

If it doesn't involve fire arm in some way, it's not secure.