Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:13:11
Message-Id: 200912171612.46308.wonko@wonkology.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale by Alan McKinnon
1 Alan McKinnon writes:
2
3 > On Thursday 17 December 2009 02:37:54 Robert Bridge wrote:
4 > > dd is pretty thorough... afterall, it writes to every single block on
5 > > the disk.
6 >
7 > And the resulting effect from doing that once is:
8 >
9 > Trivially easy to recover the data that was there just before you did
10 > the dd
11 >
12 > Why? Data on-disk is not a binary cell like ram. It is a magnetic
13 > pattern and the pattern from the previous write is still there IIF you
14 > know how to find it
15
16 I disagree here. In theory it may be possible, but trivially? Seems no one
17 ever did it yet.
18 From <http://www.h-online.com/newsticker/news/item/Secure-deletion-a-
19 single-overwrite-will-do-it-739699.html> :
20
21 They concluded that, after a single overwrite of the data on a drive,
22 whether it be an old 1-gigabyte disk or a current model (at the time
23 of the study), the likelihood of still being able to reconstruct
24 anything is practically zero. Well, OK, not quite: a single bit whose
25 precise location is known can in fact be correctly reconstructed with
26 56 per cent probability (in one of the quoted examples). To recover a
27 byte, however, correct head positioning would have to be precisely
28 repeated eight times, and the probability of that is only 0.97 per
29 cent. Recovering anything beyond a single byte is even less likely.
30
31 Wonko

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Preparing a laptop for sale Nevynxxx <nevyn@××××××××××.uk>