[jiggy2011]

Very true, if you don't encrypt data (with a strong algorithm + key) then it will always be accessible to anyone with hardware access.

I remember with Windows XP a friend had a failing hard disk that would no longer boot Windows and they asked if I could try and recover some data from it.

I plugged the disk into my tower and booted my own copy of Windows and tried to access the "My Documents" folder of the broken disk from there. It gave me some theatre about not being allowed to access the files there because I didn't have permission.

Then I rebooted my computer into Linux and mounted it with the NTFS drivers and of course all the files were there to be accessed. As an experiment I rebooted to my Windows XP again and logged into my local administrator account, this also let me access the files.

I can't help but feel that some of these measures perhaps give an illusion of security.

I also wonder with say computer forensics whether something like a file timestamp could be used as evidence in court since these could be easily tampered with by someone using a non standard FS driver.