On 7 Dec 2022, at 13:04, Hendrik Jäger via swinog swinog@lists.swinog.ch wrote:
Hi
And this is a problem if you rely on something you can not verify immediately. For example if I use a big hammer I immedialtey see the results. But a degaußed Disk does not looked destroyed - you can not verify it with your eyes.
You see the physical result but does that really reliably mean that the data is not recoverable? I’m just thinking of the work some germans are doing to reconstruct shreddered stasi files: they also seemed completely destroyed, at least enough that the stasi considered it enough, yet they are being reconstructed. I’d imagine that a hammer would not be enough to be _certain_ that reconstruction is _impossible_ (not just more or less convinced that no one will put in the effort to attempt it). Are you sure it is enough? When is it enough? I imagine bent platters are hard but not quite impossible to reconstruct and the effort required would probably not be worth the results in most cases. But that always depends on the significance of the data on the disks … I wouldn’t feel _certain_ with neither hammer nor degausser because I’m not a recovery expert. Melting the platters down with just heat or thermite or something would probably convince me. Shredding them to 1x1mm tiny pieces would leave me reasonably certain enough for most scenarios, as well.
Any data recovery experts on this list who can shed more light?
As I noted: Full Disk Encryption.
Throw away the encryption keys (forget them) and you are done.
It solves the "disks get stolen" and the "we need to destroy the disk" part, noting that when a disk fails you cannot write to it anymore.
Any physical destruction is then just for show.
Greets, Jeroen