05/08/08 10:26 AM
Extreme Data Recovery
I’m sure many people have already seen that data was recovered from a Columbia (shuttle) hard drive. Yes, this was the shuttle that blew up on reentry back in 2003. Needless to say, the drive would be expected to be quite physically destroyed. There was some quite important research data on the drive, and the drive was sent to OnTrack Data Recovery Services for an attempt at recovery. Well, they were able to recover 99% of the data off of the drive.
Now, admittedly, the details on the actual data recovery were slim. How well was it protected inside the shuttle’s hull? What kind of temperatures was it exposed to? What kind of impact did it have? How much did it cost (both in time and money)? But, that’s just impressive. (And it just confirmed that I will continue to buy Seagate drives!)
What does that mean for us mere mortals? Bashing a Seagate drive with a hammer is not enough for “Data destruction”. Incineration may not even be enough for complete and total data destruction. Some of the things we’ve taken for granted about destroying hard drives have been turned on their head. I used to recommend that people open up their hard drives and leave fingerprints all over the platters as a method of making them unreadable. Maybe this isn’t the case any more.
This type of article makes the case for disk encryption, whether full disk or at least the data. Then even if the drive does survive re-entry, the only data that’s recovered is garbage to anyone without the key. On the flip side – remember that the full disk encryption will probably render your data unrecoverable should you actually need it recovered. (That’s what backups are for people!)