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What Not To Do With Your Data
Tiny Tim writes "Stupidity strikes! A data recovery company has revealed the dumbest data disasters it's confronted this year — including rotting bananas, smelly socks and a university professor's foolhardy application of WD-40."
Original ontrack article - Top 10 List of Data Loss Disasters of 2006
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
The article is a summary of an advert. The original can be found here: http://ontrack.co.uk/special/data-disasters-2006.a spx?hp=Top10_2006
That "article" is nothing more than a commercial for using their data recovery service.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
"Can we at least *try* to avoid posting false news items that are really nothing more than thinly-disguised press releases?"
Can you please cite the false parts of this news item? If you can't, why call it false?
Where were you when the voynix came?
I concur that this is a lousy promotional post. Therefore I'd like to make sure everyone knows the trick of putting failed/failing hard drives in the freezer for a few minutes. For reasons unknown to me, it normally gets them running long enough to pull the important data off them. If you're tempted to send a failed drive to a recovery company, try this first.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
No, it doesn't. All a full format does is relabel all the sectors and erase the FAT or MFT.
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" -- Kosh
http://www.semshred.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php /id/680/tp/VE1HUj0xLHRpZD02NzIs
A friend gave me an old iMac G4 because the HD (Quantum Fireball 13 GB) was fried. The HD's motor driver chip had a nice burn mark where the chip had spewed it's magic smoke. I yanked the circuit board of a similar HD (Quantum Fireball 10 GB) -- the circuit boards "look" identical -- and the Frankenstein HD worked. My friend got her data back and I got to keep the iMac.
The point is that electronics problems with HDs (but not mechanical problems) can be fixed by swapping circuit boards.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The NSA (and by extension the DoD) does not allow, under any circumstances, the use of wiping software to declassify hard disks. No matter how many passes. They might have at one point but nowadays there are no guarantees with the way storage technology changes so quickly so that they decided it would no longer be a good policy.
Disks can be wiped using a single 0-pass to be re-used for a different project at the same or higher classification level (but different need-to-know).
But disks can never go lower. Than can only be destroyed by melting or shredding. You remove the platters from the drive, send them to Ft. Meade, and they run it through the shedder, and send you a receipt of destruction.
This also applies to flash media (compact flash, USB memory sticks). Same rules.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
DoD grade is complete destruction by an NSA-approved procedure. They remove and shred the platters.
Please don't perpetuate that myth.
Actually there are several different levels of DOD grade in handling of hard drives depending on the grade of the information on them (unclassified, secret, top secret, etc).
I refer you to the Clearing and Sanitization Matrix.
Approved ways to 'Sanatize' (as opposed to 'Clear') hard drives include:
"d. Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify. THIS METHOD IS NOT APPROVED FOR SANITIZING MEDIA THAT CONTAINS TOP SECRET INFORMATION."
So overwriting is indeed DOD approved, just not for "top Secret" information.
Top Secret data may be 'Sanatized' by:
"a. Degauss with a Type I degausser"
"b. Degauss with a Type II degausser."
As well as
"m. Destroy - Disintegrate, incinerate, pulverize, shred, or melt."
-- which seems to be the only one you are familiar with.
Please do your research before accusing someone of perpetuating myths.