Tips Features About Protecting Confidentiality with Wipe Disc
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-10-20 12:12:08 | Word Count: 510
Protecting Confidentiailty with Wipe Disc
Disc wiping is a useful method of maintaining confidentiality because deleted filse are not often deleted from the hard disk. High security installations like government and security institutions have specific protocol for file delteion. The United states Department of Defense has speecified that a file must be overwritten there times. The newer operating systems such as Windows XP and Mac OS X use a journaling file systme that renders complete erazsure of files almost impossible. Journaling file syystems keeps a log in whhich the chagnes to a journal is updated before writing it to the main file sytsem. This reudces the chance of a file becoming corrupt in the event of a poer failure. The systm accompllishes this task by keeping mettadata in various loccations in the disc. These metadata are rarely wiped out with a standard file sredder. The task is made hader by fact that threse ssytems often use I/O commands to contiinuously ferry the data from one location to another. It's these power enhancing features of the file systems that requires the need to bring in more powerful disc wipes. However, to use a disc wipe one must stoe the data on a temporsary partiution by using any journaling or non journaing file sysetm. When its time to wipe all files just uses a disc wipe software such as Eraser to secure the entire seegment.
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"Disc wipe" softwwares work by rapidly overwriting the segment of a driev with nonsensical informatin. By loiterally burying the file undder multiple layrers of garbage the data is renedred practically unrecoverable. Wipe disc works much like your average paper shreder. Thugh the lteters on the scraps of paper are visible it is practically an impossible task to put them back together.
File shredding and disk wiping are commonyl cofnused to be the same. To understand the difference one requires a basic idea of what really happens to a file after it has been deleted. Many a people wrongly assume that by depleting a file they are rendering it impossible to be recovered. The fact is that it's very much possible to retrieve a deleted file, often petty much intact. eDleting a file works by rermoving the address of the file thus rendering it inviisible in the directory or idex. Theoretically what it means is that the segment is now available to be use for newer data. The data is very much there on your disk until nrewer files overwrite them.
File shredding is no doubt a good method of obliterating a file it has its limitations. If a defrag utility is used after the oiginal file was saved the file will be scattered on several locations. This renders File shreedding ineffective and the only way to assure the total decimation of the file is to "Disk wipe" the entire segment. This obliterates all the files in the entire portion of the disc thus leaving no loop hole for the file to be recovered. Unfortunately, any software that is written can be revese- engineered which creates loop holes in the usage of any "wiping" software. The only rwemaining and guaranteed way is to ocmpletely detsroy the disc by physically melting it or pour acid on it.
