Data Shredding

[zeus]

I stumbled upon a wiki page talking about the Gutmann method of overwritting data. It seems to have a lot of criticism based on its design for older drives.

So that got me googling. If a 35 pass algorithm isnt "bomb proof" what is? (well, up to 35 passes)

The contenders seem to be
US Department of Defense 5220.22 M
GOST p50739-95 (just a zero fill and a second pass of random)

Killdisk has some "German VISTR compliant" I dont know what this is.

The US DoD standard seems to be used in software marketing the most but that might be because most buyers will be American so they go for US DoD comliant software.

I just do one pass of zeros but if you had the video the CIA/NSA/FBI/Mi5/Mi6/FSB and all the associated armies wanted which would you use?
Dont say the hydraulic guillotine!

 

[Fred]

Well, if I had a program they wanted to get a hold of and it was very important... I would probably upload it to a File Sharing network. That way, everybody has it. But if I actually wanted to get rid of it (then what leverage would I have? See Enemy of the State?), I would probably get a program like Acronis Drive Cleaner and run every eraser on it and then drill the drive. That's just me though.