ShadowedOne
asked on
Verify Data Erasure?
Here is the general situation.
My organization has a number of data tapes (backup tapes) that we need to dispose of. We have purchased a media degausser and are in the process of degaussing all of the tapes.
My question is this. Is there a method/utility/suite that can verify that the data has been erased fully? In other words is there a utility that can read raw data off the tapes and reassemble the data into files? That way if any files were shown it could be concluded that the data is not fully erased.
Thanks all.
-R
My organization has a number of data tapes (backup tapes) that we need to dispose of. We have purchased a media degausser and are in the process of degaussing all of the tapes.
My question is this. Is there a method/utility/suite that can verify that the data has been erased fully? In other words is there a utility that can read raw data off the tapes and reassemble the data into files? That way if any files were shown it could be concluded that the data is not fully erased.
Thanks all.
-R
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Thanks for the points, now I'll actually try to do something to earn them...
If your goal is to erase the tape but not destroy it, and you want to be sure the data can't be recovered, a good way would be to send the erased tape to a data recovery service who specialize in retrieving data from tapes, such as
http://www.actionfront.com
and see if they can recover anything from it. These services are usually pretty expensive, but if the data is potentially attractive to snoopers, and the possible liability is high, it might be worth the cost.
If you just want to destroy the tapes, incineration is probably the cheapest method, and is guaranteed unrecoverable.
If your goal is to erase the tape but not destroy it, and you want to be sure the data can't be recovered, a good way would be to send the erased tape to a data recovery service who specialize in retrieving data from tapes, such as
http://www.actionfront.com
and see if they can recover anything from it. These services are usually pretty expensive, but if the data is potentially attractive to snoopers, and the possible liability is high, it might be worth the cost.
If you just want to destroy the tapes, incineration is probably the cheapest method, and is guaranteed unrecoverable.
ASKER
-R