[Gllug] Disk Wipe

[Chris Bell]

On Tue 25 May, Rich Walker wrote:
> 
> 
> Oh, and backtracking to the original subject, all modern drives have a
> significant chunk of space set aside for bad sector remapping. If the
> drive has enough failures on a sector, then it will discard the
> data on it and map in a new one on the next write (I think). This means
> that the previous data is still available to anyone who can coerce the
> drive into reading the mapped-out sectors.
> 
> Unscrew the lid, take the platters out, and scrub them with wire wool.
> 
   Just out of interest, and just possibly relevant, professional 2 inch
wide videotape used a rotating head that wrote tracks almost at right angles
to the tape. Cut editing had to be done only at specific points along the
tape, and the track spacing had to be maintained. The tracks were made
visible using an extremely fine grain iron powder spread over the edit point
and viewed through a microscope. If the same technique could be used on
discs it might not be bothered by a few light scratches, the discs are hard
enough for me to use as mirrors.


-- 
Chris Bell

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