Securely delete files...

[Robert J. Hansen]

Chris Walters wrote:
> I hate to tell you this, but the F.B.I. Computer Forensics Laboratory has
> successfully recovered data from a drive, where the platters were shot multiple
> times with a shotgun.

I have a friend who works in Interesting Places who tells me they once
successfully put together a CD-R that had been put through a crosscut
shredder.  As he said, "never underestimate the power of OCD and superglue."

> The only sure way to make sure no one can recover your data is to put it into a
> blast furnace (this would be hot enough to melt the whole thing into a puddle,
> and would cause substantial mixing between the ferro-magnetic alloy and the
> titanium internal structure.

Well, you don't have to slag it -- you only have to raise the
temperature to the point where quantum mechanics says "okay, the
magnetization has all gone bye-bye."  But yes, the general point remains.

The Gutmann shred is overrated (although, curiously, not by Gutmann, who
has consistently advocated for its sane use), and total annihilation
tends to be underrated.