> One of the reasons I like fat32 or fat16 is that it is very easy to > overwrite files before deletion. I can overwrite file names so that file
> names cannot be traced. Ie My sensitive documents on a technical
> publication on a comercial sensitive subject is removed when the job
> producing a technical manual for a company is finished.
I don't think that's been true for some years now...
Aside from the fact that FAT file deletion is usually only by virtue of a
flag in the directory, modern hard disks give you a logical, rather than
physical view - the number of platters, cylinders, and sectors reported to
the OS are usually different to the physical layout of the drive. The data
layout on the disk is then down to the drive firmware[1]. This is why you
can get blocks moved about as the disk surface begins to fail - without
the OS being aware or even troubled...
The practical upshot is that much of the "direct addressing" games you
could play on old drives don't actually work any more - even if they
appear to.
I certainly wouldn't trust a bit of bit-banging to remove truly sensitive
material from a modern drive. To ensure that any sector that could
hold/have held a file is erased, you'd need to fill all available space
with your erase pattern - and even then, I very much doubt that that would
erase any blocks that have been marked as "troublesome" whilst containing
the data in question. It's not going to be a trivial matter to recover any
such data, but it's certainly not rocket science...
Vic.
[1] A job interview really is not the right time to learn this. Trust me
on this one...
