>there’s definitely ways to retrieve past writes from a hard drive. Please provide some evidence. > You think just zero writing it out once is enough? I defi

>there’s definitely ways to retrieve past writes from a hard drive. Please provide some evidence. > You think just zero writing it out once is enough? I definitely think a single zero write on a disk drive is enough (or at least that it's as good as 3 writes or 100 writes). There's no evidence anyone has ever recovered a file that was overwritten by zeros a single time on any hard disk drive from the last 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Feasibility_of_recovering_overwritten_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Feasibility_of_... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511568 Hmm, it looks like the site is down now. Well, here's a copy of the content: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/the-great-zero-challenge.79982/ https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/the-great-zero-ch... I might have to run my own Great Zero Challenge v2. > Why do you think DoD standards call for no less than 3 writes when erasing a drive? I think you're referring to an old DoD standard. Prior to 2007 the DoD recommended that. Now they don't recommend that, and only recommend degaussing or destruction of the drive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Standards Old one: https://it.ouhsc.edu/policies/documents/infosecurity/DoD_5220.pdf https://it.ouhsc.edu/policies/documents/infosecurity/DoD_522... New one: https://files.meetup.com/7887332/107-009-005_Exhibit_B.pdf https://files.meetup.com/7887332/107-009-005_Exhibit_B.pdf