I have dabbled in data recovery before, on personal drives and recovering as a business. One thing is for sure...Even a single pass wipe is difficult to recover. There is an algorithm at work that tries to piece together strings of data that while the partition says is all zeros actually reports as strong or weak zeros. The software is expensive, hacked versions aren't any better and you need a serious machine to recover data in any quantity. No videos, maybe pictures and internet cache...that's it. Eight pass supposedly can be recovered by supercomputers and special equipment that involves installing the platters on a special drive. Recovering impinged (water damaged) or fire damaged drives where the plating has discolored on modern high density drives is absolutely impossible. The act of drilling a drive bends the platter enough it cannot be recovered by any means except electron microscope...and how many hackers do you think have one? Like sir said, the cia...dia, maybe the fbi could recover an physically damaged platter to even a tiny degree (literally threads of a sheet).
I offwe physical deconstruction of drives at the place of business for the customer, one of two ways, I take them apart until the platters are out OR smash them with a sledgehammer or ax outside.
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