OT: Can Reformatting A Hard Drive To ext3 Destroy All the Data On It?

[Fernando Cassia]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Robert L Cochran<cochranb at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> I'm surprised this thread was reawakened...makes me wonder what sort of
> child I created here!
>
> I first used Alan's suggestion about checking for, and if possible, using
> the security erase feature of a security-erase enabled hard drive. This
> drive was too old to have such a feature. I checked it with hdparm -I and
> then hdparm -i to verify the fact.
>
> I then used Sam's dd suggestion on the drive. I selected his suggestion
> because dd is standard Unix/Linux software, it has presumably passed
> security audits, and I don't have to make some decision about whether it
> would "phone home" on me or perhaps leave a nice little tar file on some
> area of the drive.
>
> Then I disassembled the drive. You don't need a standard screwdriver for it;
> the main requirement is a torx driver and a little ability to peel off the
> seals marked "warranty void if removed".
>
> I then did some fairly nasty things to the read/write heads and platters and
> threw out certain items drive hardware so that it is most unlikely the drive
> can be reassembled. The platters were futher belabored and rendered
> scratched, badly bent, and little-kid dirty

With all that effort to securely erase the data, and the question on a
public mailing ist, anybody would think that you HAD important data to
begin with in there!.

If I were an evildoer, I´d google your name, lookup your home address
and then pick up your trash tonight.
*VBG*

FC