Lost Emails? Bah Humbug!

Is there anything in particular that motivates this observation?

"The Navy applied such a strong magnetic field to a hard drive that it collapsed the case, and the data was still there. What Navy? What effort had to be expended to recover the data?

The motivation is the continuing saga of lost emails from certain "unnamed" political figures,knowing that all info on line is recorded for posterity.

The navy was the US Navy.

I discovered this while searching for forensic data recovery methods several years ago,due to a personal corrupt hard drive.

I found that the cost of recovery exceeded the value of my data.

Almost any data can be recovered given enough time and effort.

The article did not go into details about the effort expended on recovery.

Basically,I learned that on a new hard drive,all data is set to zero,except of course,the boot sector,and special reserved areas near the center which cannot be accessed without special restricted software.

As data is written, the original "zero's" are over written by the new data.

If the new data bit is the same as the existing data bit,the bit becomes"wider" due to the repelling effect of like magnetic polarities.

If it is the opposite,it will actually contract somewhat.

This "layering" goes on continuously,building layer upon layer as time progresses.

Secure deletion simply over writes data many times,making it very time consuming,but not impossible to recover.

So for most purposes,it is effectively deleted.

But for an entity with lots of resources,and sufficient motivation, it can be mostly recovered.

Indeed. In the interests of science I think we should have a credible reference to this event, which has the feel of urban legend.

And was it a static or an alternating field?

I do not know if it was a static or alternating field.

I presume the US Navy had enough knowledge to use an alternating filed,and high intensity pulses.

I am sure if they shot it out of one of their new rail guns,it would be "erased" permanently.

I believe they were seeking a way to quickly erase obsolete hard drives before disposal,or in case of capture by an enemy force.

The old reliable thermite seems to be the way to go.

They still use it to disable enemy vehicles and resources.

A quarter sized chunk will melt all the way through the hood,engine,oil pan,and into the ground below a vehicle.

I do not remember the source of the claim,it was many years ago,and there are bubbles in my memory pattern.

I do not vet all sources that I receive in response to a query.

If the drive was still in the case,it is possible that the case helped shield the discs from the magnetic field.

The drive probably used MFM technology,or RLL, don't recall,but it should not make any difference.

My main purpose of this post was to ridicule the statements by the press that certain emails were "lost".

(I sometimes think that the political system is like the WWE,wrestling matches:

Rehearsed ahead of time with the winner already decided,but they must complete the charade for the entertainment of the public,and to give the illusion of freedom.)

Physical destruction of the drive is an obvious way to destroy the info on the

drive,but once it has been put on the Net I think that all bets are off in completely erasing it.

I'm sure that when you melt them down the data disappears permanently.

Basic physics.

I would agree that there are likely copies of just about everything that has been sent over the internet stored somewhere out there, stored on a computer in the network between the sender and any of the receivers.

As far as erasing a document from a hard drive, I don't entirely agree. If the contents are written over multiple times with random data, possibly some bits of information could be retrieved.

For a document like an email to be of some use, enough of the document must be recovered to be intelligible. You might have more success in proving that a known document was stored on the computer at one time.

Email is low priority communication. Its price and its value correlate strongly. Other media have largely superseded it as a method of collaborative business working, and who would want to work in any other way than collaboratively (rhetorical question - NNTR)?

Hello hi tech redneck:

For the practical part agreed. Read a study years ago where they calculated that no matter how many times the disk had been erased and rewritten the data could be recovered, with the correct algorithm and of course enough time and money.

I dare anybody to recover any information off a hard drive that I have secured. Simple formula removes the actual desk take a torch and melted into a round metal marble.

And of course we are referring to professional recovery. The latest encryption concerning Apple illustrates how easy it is to protect data. Hard drives are rapidly being replaced by the solid-state versions, I haven't checked on the recovery methods for these drives however the software for my OCZ SSD drives has 2 erase settings. One for a standard reload and another multi-right if you intend to get rid of the computer.

Of course with all the storage choices it would take a real Nimrod to allow sensitive data to be recoverable. Unfortunately this not only includes lowbrow criminals but also our government.

Dating back to the Stone Age a defense contractor sold to the general public some outdated 286 machines. They had merely erased the drive fortunately early on one of these machines became the property of someone who cares. He ran simple recovery software and had a fully operational machine complete with classified data. Then promptly notified anybody that would listen of what they were doing. Needless to say there was a lot of scampering to recover all the sold machines.

Now that my intended brief post has morphed into an editorial and I have given away my age 2 more short comments.

The Murphy factor it may not be possible to destroy the data on a hard drive however and IT buddy of mine related a study he just read. Basically hard drive should be powered up every six months to a year or the data begins to deteriorate, what's new my old backups may not work but anybody with the right equipment can read everything on them.

Lastly I have done a small amount of R&D on protecting data, not that I have anything to protect but it does irk me somewhat with all the new national security protocols that someone from the government could grab one of my computers containing diagrams and specifications on ladies constructed somewhat similar to an outdoor Masonry edifice. It would be no trouble at all to protect that sensitive data in multiple ways rigged over-voltage to the memory God knows I've already done that enough times overclocking my machines.

The rest the security protocols I'll keep to myself, no use giving it away possibly the government will hire me as a consultant and there are elements out there without the technical know-how to protect their data that don't need any extra knowledge, at least for free.

A 32 or 64 HD raid array with striping would be pretty secure.

No useful information resides on any one drive,it would only contain one bit of each word written to the drive.

A stolen HD would not be a problem..Error correction software could replace all lost bits easily,even with many drives missing.

Drives can even be hot swapped without any effects.

This is not practical for the average Joe,but for Big Business and Big Brother,it is no problem.

The weak links are data transmission,transfer,and the human factor.

This is where the encryption comes in.

With the development of Quantum computers in the future,current encryption techniques will be useless,and new methods must be found.

They are working on that problem as we speak.

I figure a disc of Thermite on top of the HD hooked to a self destruct panic button would do a pretty good job of erasing the data.

Place the computer on top of fire bricks,and you limit the damage to the computer.

I have strayed from my own main topic here,I was originally talking about recovering data that has been put on the Net.It virtually lasts forever.

Big Brother is building a massive data center with many Terrabytes of storage capacity.

At least,that is the advertised capacity.

TerraByte drives are now cheap off the shelf,so I am sure it has been superseded by B Brother.

More likely in the Zettabyte or Yottabyte range range.

They will have the ability to store all information on this planet for many generations.

Gotta keep up with the EOT.

(Just because I am paranoid does not mean people are not after me.)

When I have a hard drive to dispose of I start by deleting everything & reformatting the drive. Then I expose it to a very strong magnet. Lastly I have at it with a drill and a 1/4" drill bit. No matter what method someone could use to try and recover data from it there would be holes in whatever they get off of it.

Three words my friend,

"The Big Lie."

Presumably an e-mail has been sent to somebody. Add on the number of chanells it passes thru to reach target, and it seems a fair guess that an e-maill will reside somewhere for quite a long time.

I'd suggest doing a Stalin and lobbing the hard drive in a blast furnace. Alas, once sent you have very little controll on who might get their mitts on it. Best to run on the assumption that somebody can access it. It's not even safe before you hit the 'send' key.