Jared Johnson wrote:
Do you all agree with Peter Gutman's conclusion on his theory that data can never really be erased, as noted in his quote below:
Yes. Patterns of overwriting can offer a probabilistic assurance of deletion, but not a promise. There is also the problem that disks will silently remap sectors if they're error-prone, so it's not possible in all cases to overwrite them. If you're short on fishwrap, puppy training supplies, or birdcage liner, you can print out an old whitepaper I wrote when I was trying to promote a company based on a secure deletion scheme. My proposal is to transparently encrypt every file with a different key, and assure deletion by losing the key. http://www.tenebras.com/papers/wp-draft.pdf
