Actually formatting a drive won't wipe out much. It just remakes a new empty filesystem, but the old data is still there if you know how to reach it. If you actually want to wipe out you need some more care...
But I guess the idea of the sign is letting people to gain some more time and reconsider their actions. Or maybe it refers to that brand new hard drive you bought some days ago?
etb said: Actually formatting a drive won't wipe out much. It just remakes a new empty filesystem, but the old data is still there if you know how to reach it. If you actually want to wipe out you need some more care...
But I guess the idea of the sign is letting people to gain some more time and reconsider their actions. Or maybe it refers to that brand new hard drive you bought some days ago?
Is it bad that the first thing I thought when I saw the sign was "Don't let everyone see all your weird porn after you die"? I thought that was the entire point, but nobody else seems to have said anything like that in these comments.
And is it even worse if I thought that and have nothing of the sort?
Like etb said, that does not alter the files themselves. All it does is to remove them from the directory. In other words, declare them as non-existent. Until the space is filled with new files, the deleted files are still recoverable.
To completely remove the data, either physically destroy the drive, or write everything bit to zero. This latter take 2-3 hours on a typical hard drive.
unicode said: Like etb said, that does not alter the files themselves. All it does is to remove them from the directory. In other words, declare them as non-existent. Until the space is filled with new files, the deleted files are still recoverable.
To completely remove the data, either physically destroy the drive, or write everything bit to zero. This latter take 2-3 hours on a typical hard drive.
That's exactly what the /u switch does: low-level format, regardless of the FAT sector markings, it zeros ever sector. Data can still be recovered, but it'll take time and equipment, so don't hide your Osama-correspondence from the CIA with this, but it will put your porn out of reach of regular undelete-unformat software.
unicode said: Like etb said, that does not alter the files themselves. All it does is to remove them from the directory. In other words, declare them as non-existent. Until the space is filled with new files, the deleted files are still recoverable.
To completely remove the data, either physically destroy the drive, or write everything bit to zero. This latter take 2-3 hours on a typical hard drive.
I prefer the bottom of lakes or the ocean to format my drives.
ThunderBird said: Data can still be recovered, but it'll take time and equipment
This is a surprisingly common misconception, even in 2011. For spinning-platter hard disks, the probability of recovering any single bit is approximately 56%-- simple statistics takes over at that point. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whatever bs=1. There are a select few high-grade enterprise devices which have the potential to microstep outside of track to potentially read residual overflow bits; using this technique you could theoretically recover a significant amount of data; a few blocks, even. But the odds of these blocks being contiguous and the "correct" 2048 bytes for whatever purpose is quite close to zero.
Newer NAND flash storage devices muddle the waters a little because of the automatic wear-leveling and lack parity between internal and external addressing, but your theoretical maximum is still only about 30% as of this writing. Moreover, even if you remove each of the chips and put them in a reader, you're not usually going to recover much useful because, as mentioned, there is currently no method of knowing how data was reordered for wear-leveling and fragmentation. This fact has made mobile device forensics somewhat difficult recently.
Seriously, you need `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdZ*` to be reasonably sure. *the syntax is probably a little different in windows: something like //Device/...
DschingisKhan said: This is a surprisingly common misconception, even in 2011. For spinning-platter hard disks, the probability of recovering any single bit is approximately 56%-- simple statistics takes over at that point. ...
Byakugan01 said: ...CSI and NCIS? Forensic science does not work that way. It's hollywood science that they use. Not ALL false, but...well, you get the picture.
Oh yeah?! Well, I'm gonna make a GUI in visual basic to crack your IP Address! Then we'll see who's right! I can't understand how they can say things that silly with a straight face...
ThunderBird said: What I was referring to was the reading of the residual magnetic field after a zeroing, using an atomic force microscope. Due to its sensitivity, it can detect the minuscule field left behind after a write of zeros to a sector
As I said: the possibility of recovering any single bit is ~56% (Wright, Kleiman and Sundhar, 2008). The Guttmann standard is so outdated at this point it's pretty well pointless. Read that here: www.vidarholen.net/~vidar/overwriting_hard_drive_data.pdf
As for flash memory, you're right there: wear leveling moves all the shit around so much there's no telling where a given bit is, or was two seconds ago. They may be able to freeze the bits in place by dunking the chips in liquid nitrogen, but that only preserves the data, it doesn't make it any easier to reconstruct...
What? First off, most NAND devices in the wild right now use 4kb sectors internally, so there is at least a strong possibility a lot of data is still extant in contiguous chunks, but we have no standards or guarantees about its arrangement. Best we can do is remove the physical chips and put them in a NAND reader. I'm honestly not sure why you're breaking out the liquid nitrogen for this, they're nonvolatile...
So, in any case... having to reformat a drive is hardly going to stop me from committing suicide if I still bear enough sense to know that I (and anyone I decide to care about before my death) won't suffer any consequences from what's found in my files after I'm dead, assuming my storage devices are with someone I trust.
Guys, I think the implication is that since you didn't format the drive, the sign is implying that you can recover the data.
I.e. even if there's an error that kills the drive, you can still get your work off it, thus you don't necessarily need to kill yourself if the computer dies.
Considering how tense high school and college entrance exams, and/or final exams can be, losing important data could be enough to trigger a mental BSOD, and lead someone to committing suicide.
And suicide over lost term papers is probably not as rare as one would hope.
I was considering that it was a reference to those who have stashed pornography. That's my thought on it. They're called jokes for a reason. Heh heh..., moving on I'm more torwards that.
I cannot eat even though I am hungry~♪The post-bath dining area.Well, you said that I could eat as much as I want a little while ago...N-...No!!I said that's only when you have worries!Ugh...It's Just The Right PlaceHold it, hold it, hold it!! How much do you plan to eat, Kogasa?!It doesn't seem like you're worried about anything at all!!Klik KlakLet's see... Some fried pond smelt, fried chicken, fried dumplings, and...Klik KlakSobYou said I could eat anything...Hey, hey, hey! Don't commit suicide because of a meal.MenuThink it over. Your hard disk has yet to be formatted, right?