What would count as 'authoritative'? When this came up last, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370895 , I

What would count as 'authoritative'? When this came up last, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370895 , I found papers like http://all.net/ForensicsPapers/2012-12-07-OverwrittenMagneticRecovery.pdf http://all.net/ForensicsPapers/2012-12-07-OverwrittenMagneti... > To date I have found no example of any instance in which digital data recorded on a hard disk drive and subsequently overwritten was recovered from such a drive since 1985, when about 15% of the overwritten data was claimed to have been recovered from an modified frequency modulation (MFM) disk drive. This in turn cites "Overwriting Hard Drive Data: The Great Wiping Controversy" - http://www.vidarholen.net/~vidar/overwriting_hard_drive_data.pdf http://www.vidarholen.net/~vidar/overwriting_hard_drive_data... . There is even more at http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13674/is-it-possible-to-recover-data-on-a-zeroed-hard-drive http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13674/is-it-poss... .