ABSTRACT
While the hard disk is a truly wonderful storage medium, it also has the capacity for storing information that can later come back to incriminate an individual or a company. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for example, has become particularly skilled at gleaning evidence from computer disks. In many cases, agents can even recover data from disks that people spent time carefully erasing. In this chapter, we take a look at the subject of forensics in detail as it relates to hard disks. Just how many ways is data stored on the hard drive? What does it take to completely remove information from a drive? What are your corporate and legal responsibilities with regard to data, and what can you do to eliminate sensitive data that should never be seen by prying eyes? These questions and more are covered here (see Exhibits 1 and 2 for some statistics).
