No official version of the Linux kernel, up through and including version 2.4, allowed a user land process to access the last sector of a hard disk or hard disk partition with an odd number of sectors. Although the inability to access this last sector did not affect normal operation of the system, it did prevent the complete forensic acquisition of such a disk. The author repeats an earlier exp...

Recent studies in Australia and the United Kingdom indicate that a broad cross-section of organisations are failing to adequately protect or erase confidential data stored on hard disk drives before subsequent disposal. Over 90% of hard disks that were examined as a result of the two Independent studies were in an easily recoverable state with some drives simply requiring a boot. This paper wil...

Researchers at Rits Information Security performed a study in how the Irish population disposes of their old computers. How would you dispose of your old computer, or how would the company you work for dispose of their old computers? The majority of Irish homeowners, would bring their old computers to local civic amenity centres, give it away to a relative or sell it on to another party. Some o...

In current “state of the art” disk drives, the flying height between slider and disk is on the order of 10 nm. The flying height will need to be reduced to approximately 3 nm to meet future storage density goals. At a spacing of 3 nm, severe tribological problems will occur with respect to friction, wear and lubrication of the head/disk interface. In this paper, tribology and nano-tribology pro...

A mechanism for the transition between low/hard, high/soft, and steep power law (SPL) spectral states in black hole X-ray binaries is proposed. The low/hard state is explained by the development of a magnetically arrested accretion disk attributable to the accumulation of a vertical magnetic field in a central bundle. This disk forms powerful jets and consists of thin spiral accretion streams o...

In this review, I summarize the main X-ray/hard X-ray properties of the accretion flows around black holes and neutron stars based on recent broad-band spectral and timing observations performed by the BeppoSAX and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellites. Emphasizing the spectral and timing similarities observed between black holes and neutron stars, I discuss on the most likely accretion geomet...