On Tue, 29 Jan 2019 at 03:32, Robert Nichols <rnicholsNOSPAM(a)comcast.net> wrote:
On 1/28/19 8:03 AM, Ian Malone wrote:
>I wouldn't recommend just doing /dev/zero if the CIA,
> or even a moderately funded newspaper might specifically be after your
> data,
I would be interested to know if you can name any data recovery service that has ever
demonstrated the ability to recover data from a reasonably modern hard disk that has been
overwritten once with zeros.
I can't. This doesn't mean nobody can do it though, and of the
possible cases it's the most simple to retrieve the data from, which
there is a theoretical possibility of. It's also not a case with that
many legitimate uses. Given the additional cost of using at least a
single randomised over-write is effectively zero there's basically no
reason not to take that option instead. SSD may also simply ignore a
zero write and mark blocks as unused instead, though as jdow mentioned
the wear-levelling areas can escape an over-write anyway, which is why
the ATA secure erase command exists.
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk