From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:28:47 -0800 (PST)
To: Anonymous <nobody@zifi.genetics.utah.edu>
Subject: Re: Secure Erase for PCs?
In-Reply-To: <199612110355.UAA21125@zifi.genetics.utah.edu>
Message-ID: <32AE5411.6C56@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Anonymous wrote:
> Dale Thorn sez:
> >Jamie Lawrence wrote:

[snip]

> >But nobody answered my question:  Is there a shortcut way to do the
> >wipe, say, thirty times?  Ordinarily, I'd run the program thirty
> >times, which would consist of a data write followed by a flush,
> >which would take 30x amount of time.

> Buffered writes won't work for obvious reasons. You must make raw
> writes to the sectors you seek to scramble after you gather information
> about what sectors you want to write.

That much I've known for 15 years or so....

> The innovation you are looking for is
> called "the loop". You can implement "the loop" many ways including
> taping the end of your program to the beginning. Be careful not to
> accidentally twist the paper as this will cause your writes to become reads.
> If you are using punch cards you are SOL. sheesh.
> Remind me not to use any of Dale's "utilities".

You would not likely ever have the opportunity to use such utilities,
since you obviously lack certain basic ingredients of intelligence.
I don't do "user-friendly" GUI programs, but I suppose this list is
full of MAC users for reasons known only to themselves (I don't want
to know).