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[mi6a2lm]

Current events regarding a Presidential candidate have reporters telling us what the difference is between deleting and wiping a hard drive.
WaPo link about the smartest woman in the world and her computer

Here are two links to a 2008 paper in PDF that I mentioned once before in a malware/ransomware thread.  If one does a google search for the title of the paper one sees that a publishing place has a price for it.  Overview of paper I posted in malware thread. 

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http://www.vidarholen.net/~vidar/overwriting_hard_drive_data.pdf       15 pages 487 KB actual paper w/color

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https://security.web.cern.ch/security/rules/images/overwriting-hard-drive-data.pdf      a scanned b&w copy but hey it's hosted at CERN so there!
One of the authors writes about the paper a year later:  link

[leetpiotr]

wiping is completely removing data from the drive and making unrecoverable

[securitysix]

wiping is completely removing data from the drive and making unrecoverable

You'd be surprised what's recoverable if you're willing to spend the money.

[slidemansailor]

Computer BITS are ones and zeros, while BYTES are kind-of whole characters made up of 8 BITS.  I cannot fathom how writing all zeros to every storage bit could ever be recovered to any previous information. But normal, every-day programs are not going to do that.  I believe that the deep zero writing is what they now call "wiping".

[MamaLiberty]

  I believe that the deep zero writing is what they now call "wiping".

Seems like the middle of a hot camp fire would take care of wiping a hard drive better and faster. Of course, it's a one time deal. Guess it depends on how sure you want to be of the wipe. 

[securitysix]

Computer BITS are ones and zeros, while BYTES are kind-of whole characters made up of 8 BITS.  I cannot fathom how writing all zeros to every storage bit could ever be recovered to any previous information. But normal, every-day programs are not going to do that.  I believe that the deep zero writing is what they now call "wiping".

You're talking about "writing zeros to the drive." 

When you delete a file, your operating system sets all of the bits in that sector or block of sectors to zero.  This is not the same as "writing zeros."  If nothing else gets written to that block, most of the readily available data recovery software can recover that data, even if you format the drive and delete the partition from it.

Writing zeros to the drive actively sets the data in all sectors on the drive to zero.  This is called a "low level format."  Instead of the operating system pretending there's nothing there until you tell it to put something there, it actually puts a null value there.

DoD standards are something like three passes of writing zeros to the drive, or writing zeros, then garbage data, then zeros again.  That may or may not stop a company like DriveSavers from recovering some or all of the original data.

  I believe that the deep zero writing is what they now call "wiping".

Seems like the middle of a hot camp fire would take care of wiping a hard drive better and faster. Of course, it's a one time deal. Guess it depends on how sure you want to be of the wipe. 

Possibly not.  DriveSavers allegedly can and has recovered data from drives that have gotten flooded and even shot before.

[MamaLiberty]

Possibly not.  DriveSavers allegedly can and has recovered data from drives that have gotten flooded and even shot before.

Not the same as a nice, deep bed of hot coals.

[ZooT_aLLures]

wiping is completely removing data from the drive and making unrecoverable

Actually "wiping" is overwritting existing data multiple times with random sequences of ones and zeroes to the point that knowing what any particular bit was at some fixed point in the past is impossible.
Deleting on the other hand merely overwrites the file allocation table on the disk.......but the files are still there until overwritten by new data.

[securitysix]

Possibly not.  DriveSavers allegedly can and has recovered data from drives that have gotten flooded and even shot before.

Not the same as a nice, deep bed of hot coals.

If there is enough of it left to identify it as a drive, I would operate under the assumption that DriveSavers can recover at least some data off of it.  And under that assumption, if the drive contained data that I didn't want anyone to have ever, I would handle said drive accordingly.