Is paranoia a disease or an aquired habit? Oh well, anyway,
I have it. I think it can be a useful tool, as a conversation starter
at parties, for instance.

Ok, here's the conversation starter. Back when I understood how filesystems
worked (around the time of FAT12 LOL), I had pretty good confidence of what
happened when a file was deleted, and what you needed to do to wipe the
data from a disk.

Today's filesystems are too complex for me to master, I just have to trust
the OS to do the right thing. So here's the paranoid questions.

[list=1][*]Could a filesystem be designed to save secret data?[*]Could the disk controller save secret data?[/list=1]

Let's say Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows, with a magical new
filesystem, better than NTFS, proprietary and patented. Lots of neat new features.
Since no one has yet studied it, would you be confident that it didn't have a secret
"second container" that saves stuff you wish it wouldn't?

The second question is more paranoid. What if the hardware manufacturer had a special
"relationship" with say, homeland security to make their drives save,in ordinarily
inaccessible sectors, info that might be "useful"?

It's gotta be technically feasible, but do they have the motive? Would they try it?