On 08/27/2010 08:25 AM, Todd Denniston wrote: > m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote, On 08/27/2010 10:57 AM: > >> Oh, and I *do* have to do at DOD full sanitization: I work at a US gov't >> agency, and the machine's being surplused.... >> > Suggestion, check with your local DRMO (or whatever they are calling themselves now) representative > and make sure that you are allowed to send any hard drive with the machine at *ALL*. > > Concur. As far back as the early nineties when I was in the US Navy the standard for some materials on magnetic media was physical destruction of the media via specified means. *No* form of media erasure was considered acceptable for them. Given that modern hard drives can remap damaged sectors automatically, it is quite possible for an 'erased' drive to still have data on it that can't be removed by any software based erasure because it can't be accessed by the OS. -- Benjamin Franz