Originally posted here by catch
When did I say a simple overwrite of the drive is "high assurance"? I said that there is no point in using high assurance data destruction when you are using low assurance data storage.

I again made it clear in my last post that the levels of assurance I was using were relative, not absolutes.
Catch,
I wrote:
While I disagree with Catch that a simple overwrite of a hard drive is a "high assurance" process...
To which you responded,

A comparatively high assurance process, and clearly higher than is required.
Your current objection is a distinction without a difference: all such labels are, by definition, "relative", as they must be compared with other things (some of which are, presumably, "low assurance processes").

What you wrote clearly indicated that you believe overwriting is, in the context of this discussion, a "high assurance process". If you want to argue it's all relative, then fine: I don't disagree with you. However, I'll argue that for virtually all reasonable contexts, overwriting is not a "high assurance process"--at least as compared with other, normal corporate procedures such as password-controlled logins and firewalls. Physical destruction of the disk, however, is another matter.

Even in instances where the costs outweigh the benefit? You must be an engineer.
All you're talking about is burning a third of a kilowatt-hour to run a single-pass overwrite, using free software, while you go off and do something else.

Think that extra $.04 will break the corporate bank?