Secure File Delete Question

is there anyway to recover the data that was overwritten?

No, pending any modern evidence of Guttman's work.

(Search these forums for debate on this matter -) and much further help …)

This short entry on Wikipedia has links to Guttmans paper. Basically he proposed that it may be possible through the use of "Scanning transmission electron microscopy."

Is the software you're working on going to be open source?

This short entry on Wikipedia has links to Guttmans paper. Basically he proposed that it may be possible through the use of "Scanning transmission electron microscopy."

Is the software you're working on going to be open source?

As far as open source…. I have considered doing this one as open source. If there is an interest in it, then I would be happy to post it to my site, when its done, and leave it open for people to download the source as well as the fully compiled program.

This short entry on Wikipedia has links to Guttmans paper. Basically he proposed that it may be possible through the use of "Scanning transmission electron microscopy."

And those who have actually tried it with a STEM have found it to be slow and extremely unreliable. Not significantly better than guessing, really. And that's on old low-density media from more than a decade ago.

I wish to thank you all for the taking the time to help me with this. I work full time, have four children, and go to college. It takes some time for me to complete these projects. Once this one is done, I will add it to my site, but will make it free along with source included. I hope that this may help others out, and show that it really isn't all that dificult to do. Thank you all again. D

I wish to thank you all for the taking the time to help me with this. I work full time, have four children, and go to college. It takes some time for me to complete these projects. Once this one is done, I will add it to my site, but will make it free along with source included. I hope that this may help others out, and show that it really isn't all that dificult to do. Thank you all again. D

That's great Machor, thank you for taking the time to develop the software. I will look forward to the release.

Just a question, why are you writing a secure delete program when there is already programs out there that do just that? Why reinvent the wheel? I'd ask around this forum and work on a program that isn't out there. Wiper is an awesome free wiper tool that can be used to wipe logical files and unallocated space. As for full drive wipes, anyone could pop in a linux disk and wipe with DCFLDD or use EnCase (which doesn't require a dongle).

This short entry on Wikipedia has links to Guttmans paper. Basically he proposed that it may be possible through the use of "Scanning transmission electron microscopy."

Read here
http//www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2279
http//www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2065

Mr. Guttmann itself wrote this
http//www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
(appendix to the original paper)

Looking at this from the other point of view, with the ever-increasing data density on disk platters and a corresponding reduction in feature size and use of exotic techniques to record data on the medium, it's unlikely that anything can be recovered from any recent drive except perhaps a single level via basic error-cancelling techniques. In particular the drives in use at the time that this paper was originally written have mostly fallen out of use, so the methods that applied specifically to the older, lower-density technology don't apply any more. Conversely, with modern high-density drives, even if you've got 10KB of sensitive data on a drive and can't erase it with 100% certainty, the chances of an adversary being able to find the erased traces of that 10KB in 80GB of other erased traces are close to zero.

(bolding/underlining is mine)

jaclaz