Re: [tlug] Bits to Bits, Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes

[Jim <jep200404@example.com>]

Bruce Howard wrote:

> I've wondered about this.  Is this three week soak thing really an 
> issue at current media densities?  

Is it really necessary to use /dev/random or even /dev/urandom at all? 
The vast majority of us can not recover data overwritten with a 
simple /dev/zero. 

> A colleague of mine in the United States recently claimed that 
> commercial data recovery services will no longer even accept drives 
> above a certain density as it is simply to hard to recover anything 
> useful.

Was the three week soak _ever_ necessary? I have conducted no studies 
myself, although I have some experience with analog magnetic tapes. 
Is the three week soak just disinformation? If you care about the 
data to do ten cycles of three week soaks, it would probably be 
faster, cheaper and more certain to grind the drive into dust. 

It just depends how bad the data is wanted. 
How many millions of pounds are you willing to beat the drive with? 

For me, one pass with /dev/zero is enough. 
I'll leave it to you to define your own paranoia.