Why one-pass data wiping is enough

[Alt]

An excellent article explaining why only one data wiping pass is enough to completely and irrecoverably destroy data.
The Urban Legend of Multipass Hard Disk Overwrite.

[stardust]

So I went overboard when I overwrote my 4-TB HDD 6 times before RMAing it recently? I wish I had read this first.

[maggy_mayday]

A useful and well-referenced article but we are 8 years down the road now and I think it's correct to say that all recognised sec standards require > 1 pass

[Alt]

A useful and well-referenced article but we are 8 years down the road now and I think it's correct to say that all recognised sec standards require > 1 pass

All wiping algorithms are irrelevant if you have an SSD storage device.

[Kaleron]

The curse of multi-pass data overwriting is the result of a publication by Peter Gutmann from 30 years ago. Gutmann created his 35-pass algorithm based on concerns about research aimed at recovering overwritten data. A careful reading of his publications leaves no doubt that when writing his article, Gutmann did not understand the data encoding process and the physics of storing information on hard drives. This publication is full of nonsense and errors, but for some reason it has gained axiomatic status in the secure data destruction community. Over the past 30 years, many people have drawn attention to the inadequacy of Gutmann's publications to the reality of hard drives, but these voices have been ignored or silenced. Sometimes Gutmann's errors were covered up by subsequent errors, such as in the epilogue to his publication, where Gutmann incorrectly calls PRML a data encoding method, when in fact it is a signal detection method.

It is worth noting that disk manufacturers remained unmoved by Gutmann's publication and the Secure Erase procedure boils down to a single overwrite pass. Disk manufacturers beyond any doubt understand their devices better than Peter Gutmann.

The most important errors in Peter Gutmann's publication are described here:
https://kaleron.edu.pl/throwing-Gutmann ... -trash.php