RE: Hard drives v. CF/Smart media/etc.

["Herman Frederick Ebeling, Jr." <hfebelingjr () lycos com>]

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- ----Original Message----
From: FocusHacks [mailto:focushacks () gmail com]
Sent: Wednesday, 19 October, 2005 12:06
To: hfebelingjr () lycos com
Subject: Re: Hard drives v. CF/Smart media/etc.

: NTFS is also identical to FAT as far as file recovery goes.  The space
: is marked as available, the filename is marked as deleted in the NTFS
: file table, and that's that.
:
: I use Eraser 5.2 to completely eradicate files one at a time from a hard
drive.
:
: After one over-write, file recovery tools are pretty much useless, so
: tools like PGP Wipe, Eraser 5.2 et al, would more than do the trick to
: keep the average Joe from getting the file(s) that you want to be
: gone.
:
: Expensive data recovery gurus can use electron scanning microscopes to
: analyze the surface of the disc and actually see previous data much in
: the same way you can tell the past of a tree by looking at the rings
: in the trunk.  Some experts say that this technology has been
: perfected so well that it's sometimes possible to access every bit of
: information back to when the drive was freshly assembled.  I don't
: know how much truth there is to that claim, though.  I do know that 10
: overwrites isn't enough for the ultra-paranoid.  This also goes for
: re-writeable optical or magneto-optical media.  Traces of previous
: contents can still exist after multiple erase and over-writes.

Which is why I was surprised to see on CSI: NY that they NYC police had such a
piece of equipment.

:
: Physical destruction is usually the best method.  There are companies
: that sell metal shredding machines that will reduce hard drives,
: fist-fulls of DVD's and CD's, floppy diskettes and anything else you
: can think of, into tiny shards of scrap.  There's no data recovery
: expert in the world that's prepared for that.

Cool, and for those who can afford those shredding machines there's the ole
Black & Decker drill, 10 oz ball peen
hammer, and fire. . .

:
: Flash media is different than magnetic media.  There are no residual
: magnetic particles.  Each bit is held in a binary state and that's
: that.  One overwrite, all gone, period.  Simply erasing the file will
: result in a recoverable situation, but a program that actually
: overwrites the filespace or the whole drive will easily destroy
: everything on the media.

That's what I thought.

:
: If you have a very large capacity flash device, say a 4 gigabyte
: compact flash card that you needed completely wiped in a hurry, you
: could toss it into a microwave for 10-30 seconds.  Sure, you would
: never be able to use it again; however, at the same time all the data
: would be completely decimated without any question.  This is
: borderline between physical and logical destruction.

What if anything happens to the microwave?

:
: On 10/18/05, Herman Frederick Ebeling, Jr. <hfebelingjr () lycos com> wrote:
::
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:: - ----Original Message----
:: From: Raoul Armfield [mailto:armfield () amnh org]
:: Sent: Tuesday, 18 October, 2005 14:09
:: To: hfebelingjr () lycos com
:: Cc: security-basics () securityfocus com
:: Subject: Re: Hard drives v. CF/Smart media/etc.
::
::: Herman Frederick Ebeling, Jr. wrote:
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:::: Here's a good question that I don't think I've seen any articles on.  As we
:::: all know even though that just because a
:::: file is "deleted" from a HD doesn't mean that the info is really "deleted"
:::: as it can (depending on how badly someone
:::: wants to) be recovered.  Does the same hold true for CF/Smart media/etc.
types of media?
::::
:::
::: Yes since they are for the most part using FAT or FAT32 as the file
::: system.  So deleting a file still only marks the space as overwritable
::: not actually removing the data.
::
:: Raoul,
::
::         What if someone is using the NTFS file system?  How many time would
one have to
:: overwrite the data before it became
:: unrecoverable?  Would say PGPs wipe function be more effective on flash media
:: then on an actual HD/floppy disk?
::
:: Herman
::
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