ATA hard drives are the most common type of hard drive found on PC's. They are generally accessed in SATA (Serial) drives or PATA (Parallel) scenarios. ATA hard drives are usually less expensive that SCSI drives, which are found in servers and disk storage arrays.
Checksum
A checksum or hash sum is a fixed-size datum computed from an arbitrary block of digital data for the purpose of detecting accidental errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. The integrity of the data can be checked at any later time by recomputing the checksum and comparing it with the stored one. If the checksums do not match, it is an indication that the data has been altered. Checksum functionality is built into the Hammer's audit trail log.
Prior to NISTs establishment new best practices in 2007, the older, Department of Defense standard requires 3 levels of overwriting.
Clearing
Software based hard drive purging method uses special applications to write patterns of meaningless data (a combination of 1s and 0s) onto the drive, usually requiring several passes. Prior to NISTs establishment new best practices in 2007, the older, Department of Defense standard requires 3 levels of overwriting.
Degaussing
Deploys a powerful magnetic field to destroy all magnetically recorded data on electronic media. See a comparison of degaussing vs. Security Erase-enabled data destruction devices here.
End of Life Data Cycle
The end of the useful working phase of digital information, whether stored on a hard drive, disk array, CD-ROM or other electronic media. Long overlooked in the security business, proper destruction and decommissioning of electronic media is taking on new importance as government oversight intensifies.
Purging
Purging information is a media sanitization process that protects the confidentiality of information on a hard drive against a laboratory attack. Purging, which includes Security Erase, degaussing and software overwriting technologies, is rated by NIST at the highest level of security that doesn't involve actual physical destruction.
Forensic Recovery
The process of recovering destroyed or otherwise compromised data from hard drives, CD-ROMs or other electronic media. Data recovery engineers employ specialized technologies such as the PSIClone to access hard to recover data on hard drives.
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports accurate and compatible measurements by certifying and providing over 1300 Standard Reference Materials® with well-characterized composition or properties, or both. These materials are used to perform instrument calibrations in units as part of overall quality assurance programs, to verify the accuracy of specific measurements and to support the development of new measurement methods. With regard to data destruction on electronic media, NIST has issued Special Publication 800-88, which specifies best practices for sanitizing hard drives.
Sanitization
Refers to various methods that eliminate data from hard drives, CD-ROMs and other magnetic media, synonymous with purging and clearing.
SCSI Hard Drive
Sometimes called a "scuzzi" drive, SCSI hard drives are more expensive and usally have greater memory capacity than ATA drives. They are used in servers and disk storage arrays.
Secure Erase
Developed by the NSA and the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California San Diego, Secure erase is a utility embedded on most ATA, IDE abd SATA hard drives manufactured since 2001. The firmware based protocol uses non-externally accessible drive controls and commands to purge data in all user accessible areas of the storage device. It eradicates data beyond forensic reconstruction at speeds up to 4 GB / minute and is the technology deployed by CPR Tools Hammer data eradication device for hard drives.
UnErase
An easily accessible technology that recovered data “deleted” from a drive, possible because only file pointers to drive data are normally erased, not actual user data.
The Hammer Erases ATA hard drives securely, allows re-use.
