As you read in both the Lecture Notes and the textbook, simply deleting a file from a piece of storage media does not make it go away. Instead, it removes the file’s address from a listing of files on the drive and declares that space to be open for later read/write operations. As a result, the US Department of Defense recommends wiping storage media at least three to seven times to prevent possible retrieval of sensitive information. In this Discussion, you will consider full erasure on newer media.

Discuss whether the Department of Defense recommendations apply to other storage media such as rewritable optical devices and flash drives. If you believe that it does not, describe why not and list several approaches for data wiping.