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New Toshiba Drives Wipe Data When Turned Off
CWmike writes "Toshiba on Tuesday introduced a new hard drive feature that can wipe out data after the storage devices are powered down. The Wipe feature in Toshiba's SED (Self-Encrypting Drives) will allow for deletion of secure data prior to disposing or re-purposing hard drives, Toshiba said. The technology invalidates a hard-drive security key when a system's power supply is turned off. The new Wipe capability will go into future versions of the SED drives, for which no timeframe was given. Beyond use in PCs, Toshiba wants to put this feature on storage devices in copiers and printers."
Sounds like a good idea, but I'm almost positive there will be instances where important data is going to be screwed with by mistake. I personally would rather not have my hard drive erasing my data without my express approval, but I'm not the average Joe.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Is it really? Perhaps I can get some education here. *nix systems come with a tool called shred, which overwrites a file multiple times with random data to provide secure deletion. We also have tools like dban, which will do basically the same thing to the whole drive. How securely do tools like these erase data?
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
From the scant details in the article and summary, it appears that the drives are encrypted, and the "wipe" consists of getting rid of the encryption key.
Calling that a "wipe" is rather misleading in my opinion. Toshiba's in for one hell of a liability issue if their encryption is ever cracked -- though I'm sure they'll take care of all that in the fine print.