Death Row

On this blog, I often talk about the times where I’m called in to save data. Well, sometimes, I’m called in to play executioner.

A few weeks ago, I lined up a bunch of PC’s that I had to wipe for an upcoming liquidation, and one-by-one, I ran through a process to wipe the drives and permanently destroy their data. This has to be done with a specific kind of software utility.

You see, if you FORMAT, SYS, FDISK, or DELETE a file system on a fixed disk, there are ways data can be recovered by seeking the drive and rebuilding its indexes. You can scan the drive and recompile pointers to the file … hence the idea that data is never truly deleted.

Now, to sanitize a drive to military spec DoD 5220.22-M, you have to fill every addressable location on the drive with a random garbage character. That prevents those indexes from being recompiled. You need special software for that, and I use it to secure my client’s intellectual property while divesting or retiring microcomputer assets.

So even if you’re looking for somebody to help destroy data rather than save it, I can help you with that, too!

R

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