Erasers + Restoration = Whats Wrong??

Instead of laughing at users, laugh at INCOMPETENT programmers, who can't even write a good program to solve a simple problem. They can't even write a decent uninstaller to uninstall their OWN softwares. How ridiculous sounds that

 

Before you go and label any programmers as incompetent - and I agree that there are plenty of them, as there are plenty of incompetent/sloppy practitioners in any profession - you might perform a reality check on the starting premise of this entire thread.

Blue

 

Some good points Blue

It begs to question just how well daily data is in reality "smeared" for lack of a better term, from these various wipe programs.

In ERASER i routinely use a "custom set" on the order of say... FILES: Cluster Tip Areas + Alternate Data Streams
PATTERN: Byte 1,2,3 (01010101), (1010101010), (00000000), followed by a pass of Pseudorandom Data (Perform Passes By Random Order).
So in essence i use this 2 Pass method as my basic measure for overwriting deletable files.

I'm only looking to scramble a file enough so the system (Windows/Drive Heads) will move on over and not hesitate on it. At least thats my intention whether in reality thats accurate of not.

I noted an interesting but rather nullifying point brought up by another poster's reply that more advanced forensic devices (mechanical) can reassemble wiped data, but i doubt software could do that, and certainly not on the same scale obviously.

Blue's reply is quite logical for sake of the common windows user.

As an aside, i never seen a better Copy Machine than $M Windows, they are specially designed to record quite a layout of entered data (url's, files, other internal activity etc.), and then save them to a variety of many locales on the system.

My own personal methods seek only to achieve some noticable, howbeit small performance gains, but sometimes i wonder if all those passes from simple wipes to "DELETE COMPLETELY" strategies i use daily might translate in hard drive deterioration over time.
I must add also with that being said, i have use the (Heidi's) ERASER'S wipe file feature for years with no apparent (yet) problems to my any of my hard drives, but doesn't wipe programs by their very nature of overwriting files, slack space and the like, make a lot more use of the HD's read/write heads?

Interesting Topic.