From: shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 95 15:22:56 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: PC disk wipe software
Message-ID: <199510092220.SAA19341@book.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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In article <199510091318.JAA24166@jekyll.piermont.com>, perry@piermont.com
("Perry E. Metzger") wrote:

> I thought I'd ask here, since its related to a lot of the stuff people
> have written for the PC platform in these parts. I need to securely
> wipe a bunch of data from an MS-DOS hard drive, so that it can't be
> recovered. Are there any readily available utilities for this? Will
> any of them selectively erase only data that isn't allocated to
> existing files?

Whatever you use, check its claims with a disk editor. None of the various
wipe utilities for the Mac that I am aware of (Norton, Burn) work as
advertized. They all invariably fail to wipe the slackspace at the end of
allocated, but not fully used blocks. Consequently, several kB of data
left behind in said slackspace by previously deleted files will be missed
on your average drive.
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