full-disclosure - Re: Disk wiping -- An alternate approach?

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Message-ID: <3af3d47c1001260804v53d12ad7u8d0368413e5fb3f4@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:04:46 +0100
From: Christian Sciberras <uuf6429@...il.com>
To: Michael Holstein <michael.holstein@...ohio.edu>
Cc: full-disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Disk wiping -- An alternate approach?

I was thinking, since all this (reasonable) fuss on wiping a disk over 10
times to ensure non-readability, how come we're yet very limited on space
usage?
If, for example, I overwrote a bitmap file with a text one, what stops the
computer from recovering/storing both (without using additional space)?
Just a couple curiosities of mine.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Michael Holstein <
michael.holstein@...ohio.edu> wrote:

>
> > By the way, does somebody knows about the flash memory?
> > Is zeroing a whole usb key enough to make the data unrecoverable?
> >
>
> No, wear-leveling (done at the memory controller level) will dynamically
> re-map addresses on the actual flash chip to ensure a relatively
> consistent number of write cycles across the entire drive.
>
> The only way to completely "wipe" a flash disk is with a hammer.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael Holstein
> Cleveland State University
>
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