[ubuntu-uk] mbr

[Liam Proven]

On 28 January 2012 22:12, Andy Smith <andy at bitfolk.com> wrote:
> Hi Liam,
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 09:24:52PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
>> Well, in theory, if you paid Kroll Ontrack £LOTS then they claim to be
>> able to get much or all of the data off a zero-overwritten drive by
>> meticulously examining the very edge of the tracks for a sort of
>> magnetic overspill. Costs tens of thousands or more, though.
>
> I do not believe that any commercial data recovery company will
> promise to be able to retrieve anything that corresponds to even a
> small fraction of your data after you tell them you've done this.
>
> Have you ever heard of a company promising to be able to do this?
>
> http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/deleting-and-wiping-data/
>
>    In fact companies such as Ontrack, who spend millions of dollars
>    on research into data recovery are not able to do this. This
>    wiping does not need to be done 33, 12, or even 3 times. Just
>    once.
>
> There was once a challenge to see if anyone would be able to recover
> data from a disk that was overwritten once, and after describing
> what had been done, no company was interested in trying. However
> IIRC the bounty for the challenge was something trivial like <$100,
> so it wasn't a very useful challenge unfortunately.
>
> But supposing you have a team of people with electron microscopes
> willing to spend months examining each sector of the surface of this
> drive you have wiped once, the chances of working out what state
> each bit was in before the wipe are 49% on modern drives:
>
>    http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/securityfocus/security-basics/2008-10/msg00199.html
>
> i.e. you would achieve more success flipping a coin and writing 1
> for heads and 0 for tails.
>
> If anyone has ever been able to retrieve any useful data off of a
> disk that's been wiped once, I've never heard of it. They should
> tell someone, because they would be a world-wide sensation and no
> doubt have governments beating a path to their door.
>
> Even so, I still DBAN where other people's data is concerned,
> because people always have this sort of doubt.

Hmm. Fair enough. I will take you word for it.

IIRC I was told this when touring Dr Solomon's, way back in the
mid-1990s when I was the staff technical expert on PC Pro magazine.
Perhaps in those days of relatively chunky data tracks, it was viable,
whereas now it isn't. I don't know.

Also, a bounty of $100? Forget it. Dr Solly's used to charge in the
thousands of pounds for normal data recovery off merely
mechanically-damaged drives. The extreme stuff cost *lots* more. I
wouldn't think they'd bother unless there was a prize of £x00,000 to
£x,000,000. It was a /very/ lucrative business - few could do what
they did.

Which is why they sold off the antivirus side of the business to
McAfee, which ultimately killed the company, I believe. Division of
some of the giant brains and so on.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884