CCleaner 7 & 35 Passes

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by DasFox, Jan 28, 2008.

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  1. DasFox

    DasFox Registered Member

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    CCleaner I think is pretty decent at cleaning up the Temp files...

    I can't remember but if memory serves me right just recently they added in Gutmann 35 passes.

    From what I remember NSA 7 passes is all really anyone needs, but I was wondering does anyone here have any real info feedback on Gutmann if it helps, or not really, and if doing 35 passes could this also cause problems for the drive?

    THANKS
     
  2. FadeAway

    FadeAway Registered Member

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    Quoting Peter Gutmann's own words:

    "In the time since this paper was published, some people have treated
    the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of
    voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a technical
    analysis of drive encoding techniques. As a result, they advocate
    applying the voodoo to PRML and EPRML drives even though it will have
    no more effect than a simple scrubbing with random data. In fact
    performing the full 35-pass overwrite is pointless for any drive
    since it targets a blend of scenarios involving all types of
    (normally-used) encoding technology, which covers everything
    back to 30+-year-old MFM methods (if you don't understand that statement,
    re-read the paper). If you're using a drive which uses encoding
    technology X, you only need to perform the passes specific to X,
    and you never need to perform all 35 passes. For any modern PRML/EPRML
    drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do. As the
    paper says, "A good scrubbing with random data will do about as well
    as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true now."

    Full text here:

    http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

    I personally have no knowledge of drive encoding methods, but I use 7 passes
    for small files, & 1 pass for large ones.
     
  3. BlueZannetti

    BlueZannetti Registered Member

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    For current technology drives - and assuming you haven't irritated a complete large sovereign nation who have years to get back to you - a single overwrite should suffice.

    Although I see casual mention of recovery made, I've not been able to find a single clear and publicly documented instance in which it has occurred (again - with current technology and density HDD's) after even a single overwrite.

    Blue
     
  4. jrmhng

    jrmhng Registered Member

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    Location:
    Australia
    I've read that there is a bigger issue with meta data in NTFS (leaving traces) than data being recovered after being written over with random data.
     
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