shredding files on a flash drive

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On Jan 26, 2008 10:30 AM, James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> As I have said before, please read about how drives actually work.  Each
> disk surface is written independently of the others and contains the
> necessary tracking and clocking info.  In common drives, the data is
> written to one track or "cylinder" until that track is full.  Then the
> heads are switched to access the next surface etc.  Once all the tracks
> are full in one cylinder, then the head seeks to the next cylinder.  The
> clock and servo info are recovered from the disk surface every time a
> head switch takes place and the sector number verified on every read or
> write operation.  This means that it's possible to take any individual
> disk from the array and recover it's data.  Recovering entire files,
> however, will require recovering the data from all surfaces that the
> file existed on.  Also, the onus is generally on the person making the
> claim to provide the proof.  You claimed it was impossible.  I have
> provided evidence that it is not so, including using some of your own
> evidence.  You have more than demonstrated you are arguing from a point
> of ignorance, where you don't understand the fundamentals of how disk
> drives work.  Please do a little research, before demanding that someone
> has to prove you wrong.  As I mentioned earlier, at one point in my
> career, maintaining and repairing disk drives was part of my job, so I
> also have some actual hands on experience to rely on.

I won't reply to this any further.  I made my point.  You still didn't
answer my question about recovering files from multi-platter drives
using only one platter.  Additionally, you have not read the two PDF
documents I sent here, which clearly states the improbability of
recovering files in this manner once the platters are separated.
Nothing is impossible, but I do believe it to be an intractable
problem at this time, with the resources available to the general
business or consumer.  Perhaps government agencies know of some way --
they always seem to have tricks up their sleeves.  A friend of mine is
a PhD student at Berkeley.  He worked for the NSA,  He can tell me
that they have tricks up their sleeve, but he can't tell me what the
tricks are.  It is very interesting to know that there are tricks
though :-)

Good luck in your quest to recover my separated platters!!!  Go forth
and find that magical device...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen
"Know something about everything and everything about something."
--
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