On a bet with my boss at work, just to prove him wrong... I had to take a hard drive, wipe it with one pass. It was a "Quick Erase", single pass. Done with DBAN.

I then used, Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional, to run a full scan on the hard drive.

Now, the data above is partially correct according to what I found, but still misleading.

I was able to recover a few files. Not all of the files, literally only a few of them. But that was still something. And if we are talking about proprietary secrets, then something is _not_ acceptable.

I did try again on another hard drive as I was surprised by the results and the second time I got nothing.

The bet was that I couldn't recover anything. I was cocky and I was able to prove him wrong.

If I were you, I would always do a minimum of a 7 pass, PRNG Stream, wipe. If it is anything important, then you better re-evaluate the amount of passes.

Don't forget all, misinformation is king. Don't let someone fool you into being less secure. Paranoia can be a benefit sometimes.

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