A bit of a moot point given that many people don't secure their disk drives in any fashion given Deadbeat's experience.

Had pretty much abandoned ferrite cores by my day!

Nowadays taking such precautions wouldn't be required because all the data would already have been lost on a usb drive or e-mailed to the wrong mailing list!

More truth in that than is comfortable

In reply to a post by john2007:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery (section titled overwritten data).

SSDs may be more of a risk.

Not really - the secure erase command implemented on most SSDs will really erase all the data on the drive in a few seconds.

Secure erase on conventional HDDs is less reliable.

The answer, of course, is to use an encrypted drive where a digital key is required access the drive. Overwrite the key stored in the controller and the entire encrypted disc is useless.

Such discs were invented years ago but nobody bothered to use them and software encrypted drives (like the one I am using at this moment - work PC!) have only become common recently.

Strangely, when this PC is replaced I am still expected to use a secure erase packiage to wipe the disc - they obviously don't trust the encryption!

In reply to a post by billford:

It can be done if you're really determined, but as Mick said it's expensive and time-consuming.

Not being funny (because I don't disagree) but can you provide a link to any evidence suggesting it has been done on a modern hard drive? To the best of my knowledge it is one of them things that has never actually been proven. Not that we would expect our friendly government departments to admit to being able to do it of course.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by billford:

It can be done if you're really determined, but as Mick said it's expensive and time-consuming.

Not being funny (because I don't disagree) but can you provide a link to any evidence suggesting it has been done on a modern hard drive?

Simple answer- no, I can't.

I did spend some time down at GCHQ on a couple of occasions- I didn't witness HDDs being read the hard way, but some of the tricks I did see them pull leaves me quite convinced that they could do it if they wanted to

Bear in mind that my experience is from ten years ago, I'd guess that both HDD security and the techniques for cracking it have both changed a lot in that time.

In reply to a post by billford:

But if the data is worth it... when we had to dispose of classified HDDs at Aldermaston, they were stripped down and the magnetic coating sandblasted off the platters.

Did they get you to run any sort of basic deletion first? On paper that process described is adding a great deal of "surface" for the disk or platters to go missing or be stolen. It's a bit like when exam papers get sent off in a van for incineration, the bags get passed around and all sorts. It's much easier to put it through the paper shredder on the desk. Nobody is arsed enough to try and put it back together. Yet if the sheets come out of the bag in their entrity it's worth a look..

In reply to a post by camieabz:

I'm slightly peturbed at that statistic. Why didn't they say three drives or the actual amount? "At least two" is a strange way of putting it when dealing with whole numbers.

It's because they have just made assumptions so they can release their FUD information that everybody knows anyway. They didn't even define "identity theft" either. You only need someone's name afterall to steal their identity.

Even the most idiotic of computer users are always talking about how to dispose their HDDs when they are done with them. You know how computer users revel in stupid security issues which they don't properly understand.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by billford:

It can be done if you're really determined, but as Mick said it's expensive and time-consuming.

Not being funny (because I don't disagree) but can you provide a link to any evidence suggesting it has been done on a modern hard drive? To the best of my knowledge it is one of them things that has never actually been proven. Not that we would expect our friendly government departments to admit to being able to do it of course.

Well, there are plenty of data recovery firms out there. They have to earn their money somehow. I don't imagine that all they do is fix MBRs and run undelete.

I am not aware of any data recovery firms who can recover data from a drive that has been zeroed, but willing to be proven wrong.