VMS Drive Cleanup Assist

[Gordon JC Pearce]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 10/26/2005 at 11:49 AM Erik Klein wrote:
> 
> 
>>The question is: how do I clean the drives completely without any real
>>chance of data being recovered?  The only other option would be to leave
>>the drives behind so they can be crushed.
> 
> 
> If there is/was sensitive data on the drives and I were in the management
> decision-making position, there's no way I'd let those drives out of the
> door intact, no matter what anyone told me about being able to erase them.
> The logic is pretty obvious--what do I have to gain by letting the drives
> out assuming they've been cleared and what do I stand to lose by letting
> them go if they aren't?

A sense of their own self-importance?  No-one cares that much, except 
ego-charged management types.  Really.

After the disk has been overwritten *once*, the data can not be 
recovered without extremely specialised tools.  Write a suitably random 
pattern over the whole disk a couple of times, and it is gone.  Utterly 
gone.  No amount of prodding with electron microscopes will bring it back.

Gordon.