From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 6 04:58:58 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44D7516A41F for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 04:58:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from peterclutton@gmail.com) Received: from xproxy.gmail.com (xproxy.gmail.com [66.249.82.197]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C712443D45 for ; Thu, 6 Oct 2005 04:58:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from peterclutton@gmail.com) Received: by xproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id t5so207021wxc for ; Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:58:57 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=ONCQJVrFJvQJouUpxzSqaNaSnt+Yc4ijT51DqVRjag4gUO8zcwUxuWCHq7AEYCfQyr/EQ117U0R05pvJZSv6OrO/lu3Y/NuQ7TtchGwL54JOznXAZa1NrMMeqYKOpH249JBnjjssZFjj0s42gjTi+cUPT8c+Skm1z1nNtXKx63s= Received: by 10.70.129.10 with SMTP id b10mr908860wxd; Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.91.17 with HTTP; Wed, 5 Oct 2005 21:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <57416b300510052158s6d60a570h8c075109dbfac38e@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 14:58:57 +1000 From: Peter Clutton To: Kirk Strauser In-Reply-To: <200510052204.36883.kirk@strauser.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <20051005184437.GA36369@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <200510052204.36883.kirk@strauser.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hidden spot on hard drives? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Peter Clutton List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 04:58:58 -0000 On 10/6/05, Kirk Strauser wrote: > On Wednesday 05 October 2005 01:44 pm, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: > > the company where I work (with Windows) is evaluating a copy protection > > product that stores info somewhere on the HDD where the [1] user cannot > > touch it, [2] a format will not erase it, [3] and Norton Ghost will not= find > > it. > > 1) No such animal. > 2) Ah - the bootblock, as others have mentioned. > 3) Of course, that doesn't say anything about Ghost v$(current + 1). > > To be blunt, your vendor is lying to you. I'm not quite so unbelieving. I mean there are always ways to get at data, hell, you could just rip the drive out and take a hex image. But that isn't the point. There are software and hardware devices which can do this for you, and thei= r claim could be true to a certain extent. There are a few other places to hide data: servo tracks, and tracks where data about bad sectors are kept, but this sometimes requires hardware to write to it. Just my two cents on an interesting subject:)