Originally posted by: pallejr
Originally posted by: Smilin
You asked if this is an urban legend or not. No it is not. You can read data that has been overwritten. It's not theoretical, it's been done.
You are right, the OP asked if this was urban legend. It is. It is true that researches have been able to recover a bit here and there on old harddrives. I'm puzzled, what will you do with those few random bits? Read your own paper again, and the link I provided. The data density and precision of modern harddrives make it even harder, next to impossible, to restore any bits, let alone an entire drive.
Section 4.2.3 of that doc states that a spin-stand MFM has been demonstrated. This is the method used to get the entire drive, not just a few bits here and there. Regardless..
The question was, "if someone decided to low-level format their hard drive using the manufacturer software, so literally every single byte of data shows as 00, is it still possible for someone to recover the data? "
Difficult, yes. Insanely difficult, yes. Time consuming, yes. Expensive, yes. Commercially viable, probably no.
However... "is it still possible for someone to recover the data?", YES.
We're not debating if it's hard or next to impossible. It is possible. I've got Charles Sobey's whitepaper right here in front of me and I'm looking at a picture of overwritten data with my own eyes.
If you wish to debate more determined efforts to hide data I'll concede. A low level format is one thing but multi-pass DoD wipes, Degaussers and such are a different story.