Yeah, there was a looong thread on this very subject on securityfocus-security basics (I think). But it was mentioned (several times) in that thread that the DoD standard is seven wipes using non-repeating/random data before it is considered clean for "confidential" data, if I recall correctly. But there was mention of several tools there as well as some interesting discussion on the how & why of data deletion/masking and data recovery (both software and scanning-electron recovery methods). -John >>> mnsan11 at earthlink.net 11/14/02 03:19PM >>> Doesn't something come with PGP where you can delete everything on a disk, create random data, encrypt it, wipe that too repeat the data several times... I think that is some sort of DoD standard too. After something like that, or a few formats, data quite possibly wont be recovered by software thats available for free or at a cheap price. On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 13:23, Brian wrote: > I'm testing data destryoing/recovery tools to determine just how good is > good enough when it comes to destroying data on a disk. > > I've read Peter Gutman's stuff and I've been using Dariks Boot and > Nuke (wipe on a linux floppy) to destroy data. Now I need to find the > world's greatest recovery utilities to see if there's any way of > retreiving it. I've used a few different utilities so far, and the best > one I've found is the tool that Ontrack provides on their website. Data > can't hide from it, but after DBAN it sure did :-). I'm looking for > something a little extra strength now... I want to make sure the ONLY way > that data can be recovered involves a few trillion dollars and a clean > room. > > These computers need to retain their hard disks, so grinding them down to > fine powder or melting them into goo isn't an option, however I realize it > is the most effective.