Security Basics mailing list archives

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


From: Fred Cohen <fred.cohen () all net>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 06:19:29 -0700

RAM is better for rapidly making data harder to get at. Specifically, putting a CD in a microwave oven or breaking it in half or even shredding it is not very good. It turns out that with a microscope you can get the bits back pretty quickly because each shard has a lot of data on it. Same with shredding any high-density media. Specific destruction processes are called for with each different sort of media.

FC

On Oct 22, 2005, at 9:43 AM, Brian Loe wrote:

Better than optical? Surely you've by now nuked a CD - in my experience,
between that and breaking one, the data is pretty much toast.

If you break a CD, do you think you could tape it together and get it to
spin up?!


-----Original Message-----
From: FocusHacks [mailto:focushacks () gmail com]
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 4:50 PM
To: hfebelingjr () lycos com
Cc: Security-Basics
Subject: Re: Hard drives v. CF/Smart media/etc.

My PDA has only an SD slot so it couldn't have read the SM
card anyways.  The SD card still works after using it in the
reader.  The reader was a cheapo IOGear or something.  My new
one is a Sandisk 12-in-1.

This is getting pretty far off topic though.  To bring it
back, I will say that all else being the same, solid state
storage is better than magnetic or optical media if you wish
to be able to erase sensitive data completely.

On 10/20/05, Herman Frederick Ebeling, Jr.





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