shredding files on a flash drive

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On Jan 25, 2008 11:00 AM, James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Can you be so certain?  Many years ago, I used to maintain mini-computer
> systems, including disk drives.  There were many times I would repair a
> drive after a head crash and then do an alignment of the heads etc.
> When you do that, one thing that's obvious is that the data is recorded
> in clearly identifiable tracks, which you can locate by watching the
> recovered signal with an oscilloscope.  What's to stop someone from
> reassembling those platters in a similar drive and, with perhaps some
> effort, recovering that data?  It may be difficult, but I not
> impossible.  I know it's possible to align a drive to the data on a
> disk, because I've done it.  You might also want to talk to someone in
> the data recovery business.  IIRC, there was a presentation by one such
> person at a TLUG meeting a few years back.

I have spoken to people in the data forensics field, yes.  With
multi-platter disk drives, I encourage anyone to prove me (and the
forensics guys) wrong.  The problem is that newer disks are aligned
and sealed at the same time in the factory.  The tracking information
is written to the disk while it is enclosed.  I don't see how you
would determine how to align the tracks from data which you cannot
determine is valid data or not.  Please explain and show proof.  Btw,
I have done and consulted with forensics experts about the situation
you speak of -- using a similar drive to recover data.  I encourage
anyone to provide evidence that it is possible.  There is no evidence,
that I have seen, to support it.  However, there is a multitude of
evidence to show that once you misalign the platters, your data is
toast...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen
"Know something about everything and everything about something."
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists