[clug] Secure Erase of disks/drives

[Alex Satrapa]

On 08/05/2007, at 15:57 , Alex Satrapa wrote:

> The cost is in the order of $100K for someone in the Western world  
> using commercially produced equipment, doing the work on a contract  
> basis.

Though I'll also refer you to the paper by Peter Gutmann again:

> Even for a relatively inexperienced user the time to start getting  
> images of the data on a drive platter is about 5 minutes. To start  
> getting useful images of a particular track requires more than a  
> passing knowledge of disk formats ... [and] would take  
> approximately 2-10 minutes depending on the skill of the operator  
> and the resolution required.

and

> If commercially-available SPM's are considered too expensive, it is  
> possible to build a reasonably capable SPM for about US$1400, using  
> a PC as a controller

So assuming someone in an undervalued economy has access to the tools  
and material required to build a more-than-reasonably capable SPM,  
and it ends up costing them $5000, and scanning a 300GB drive takes  
somewhere in the order of a few days - do you now have reason to be  
more paranoid about your data destruction?

Alex