[rescue] nuking from orbit

[Bran Tregare]

At 09:15 PM 8/29/01 -0500, you wrote:
>On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 06:08:48PM -0400, G W Adkins wrote:
> > This is ridiculous.  1 low-level format/verify pass from a real 
> utility, and
> > the data's GONE...  Forever.
>
>You've never seen REAL data recovery professionals at work, then.
>The only TRUE way to make SURE that its gone, is to grind the disk
>into powder.

I have to agree with Bill here. I've briefly gotten to use a hardware data 
recovery unit that you pull the circuitboard of fthe drive and hook this 
units electronics up to.... Took a drive that had been "destructively" 
written to with a random pattern of gibberish 12 different times and this 
unit was able to recover a good portion of the data from the media.  this 
was back on an old MFM drive, and as I understand it, with the right 
hardware and pulling the platters out of the bubble, there's almost a 90% 
recovery rate with some of hte newer hardware recovery units out there. 
they are expensive as hell, so generally only dedicated data recovery 
companies and governments have them.