[alexnucci]

Hi, hope all is well.

Nothing on the site is a lie. Especially, the fact that erasing data from a hardware using software is not a guaranteed way of ensuring that your data ever sees the light of day.

As a matter of fact, check out DBAN's homepage: http://www.dban.org/. The first bullet point: No guarantee of data removal (e.g. DBAN does not detect or securely erase SSDs)

Also, do a quick google search for "data extraction after formatting", you'll find plenty of solutions. From software downloads to forensic labs.

I will admit, however, that the FAQ answer lacks some depth. The site just launched, and the FAQ section is very much a work in progress. I will make sure to give more details, and reference some articles that back the point up.

Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks for the feedback!

[yellowapple]

> data extraction after formatting

That's not what DBAN is.

In order to recover data from an overwritten drive, you'd need to remove the platters and run them through specialized laboratory equipment - often running upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more - in the hopes of finding residual evidence of the previous data. This isn't even close to surefire with modern hard drives.

You're correct about SSDs, and are correct that physical destruction is the only absolute guarantee. However, it's disingenuous to imply that formatting and overwriting are equivalent (that's far from accurate), and for most consumers and even small businesses, they're dealing with a level of security that - per NIST standards - is sufficiently handled with overwriting alone.

[jdong]

That particular text seemed to be talking about hard drives, not SSDs. Most SSDs support secure erase, unless the drive is defective in which case physical destruction is in fact required.

Extracting data from a fully rewritten HDD is completely unrealistic. (Formatting obviously does not achieve this)