Re: Default number of overwrites in shred

[Peter Eckersley]

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 19:05 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Peter Eckersley <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I was wondering if you would consider reducing the number of default
> > overwrites for "shred" from 25 to something more like 5?
> 
> As near as I can make out, for modern disks the default should be 1.
> That's easy to change.  Any objections?
> 
We might choose 2, because of the 1% chance of recovery cited by one of
the recovery firms in that paper.  

Or 3, because we're paranoid.

> There's also the Secure Erase facility built into modern ATA drives,
> which it sounds like 'shred' should use if it's available.
> Does anybody know how well GNU/Linux supports it?
> See <http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/hughes/SecureErase.html>.
-- 
Peter Eckersley                            address@hidden
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Electronic Frontier Foundation    Fax  +1 415 436 9993