[ale] quick, simple backup

[Marvin Dickens]

On Sat, 2003-05-24 at 00:06, Steve Nicholas wrote:
> I have seen a shredder at Sams for ~$100 that claims it will shred cdroms.

Shredding CD's boggles my mind...... These things are more prolific than
cell phones and like c phones, they are harmful to the environment. Why
would you want to increase the surface area of a material that is
harmful to the environment? If the reason is data security, a more
environmentally friendly thing to do (While barely increasing the
surface area) that makes the data absolutely unrecoverable (Well, with
the exception of maybe government spooks and such...) is to rub it with
80 grain sand paper on the data side for about 5 or 10 seconds. After
that, it is possible it would permanently hoark the CD player if someone
put it in it.

The fact of the matter is (IMHO), if the data is that sensitive, having
a copy that exists that is THAT portable is not wise. The arguement 
that tapes are this portable but are put into lock boxes or vaults and
upon EOF, they are magnetically erased or blanked in a drive does not
hold water. Aptek, Inc. in Silver Spring Maryland makes tools for doing
data recovery like this from tapes (And other media...) that are
destroyed in this manner. They also make tools from damaged CD's. The
government is their primary customer.


Best regards

M. Dickens

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