OT: cd's again... one last question....

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting John Esak (Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:09:59 -0400):

> > >
> > > I mean, it takes 3 minutes!!!!  A pair of scissors and two or three
> > > cuts and not even the fictional CSI guys could put that data back
> > > together.
> >
> > While a normal reader won't be able to do anything with it, I would
> > suspect that special hardware could still read the >99% of the data
> > that has been untouched by the "two or three cuts".  Think of it as
> > breaking an LP in several pieces -- the "data" is still nearly all
> > there, even if your standard turntable can't "read" it.
>
> Hmmm, I'm not sure this holds water... or bytes.  :-)  I was always
> under the impression that data written to a CD or DVD was laid down in
> relatively the same way as on a hard disk. Which, if true, would make
> reading what was left on a shard of a disk extremely difficult wouldn't
> it?  How would you know which second and third level indirect blocks to
> *jump* to without a super block and all of its inode information?

I was under the impression that files on CDs and DVDs are written in
a contiguous segment of the disk.  Remember, the filesystem on these
disks are not meant to be updated in-place, as is the case of files
on floppies and hard drives.  It doesn't use the same concepts as
"triple-indirect inode tables" and the like.

I don't know the specifics, but I'm sure a Google for "rock ridge file
system" would turn up the details.

[clickity click]

Here's a promising starting point:

    http://www.answers.com/topic/iso-9660

[...]
> But, oh, by the way, this all presupposes that I was making the cuts in
> my CD radially from the outside to the center... but I wasn't... :-)  I
> was making them transversely in whacky zig-zag lines... didn't I mention
> that?

:-)

> It leaves the CD's in little jagged edged strips.  :-)  Okay, now you
> have to jump about 300 more years into the future to even posit that
> "special" hardware you mentioned.  :-)

:-)

Again, it all depends on how sensitive is the data that you are trying
to destroy, and what resources the "finder" has to put the pieces back
together.  Remember the paper shredder at the US Embassy in Tehran?

> Do I finally win a debate with you on this, or what?  :-) :-)

I didn't know this was a contest.  :-)

--
KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
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