NeoMomus

How effective is the cipher command in DOS in terms of preventing recovery of previously deleted data?

I usually will run the command more than once, always figured this would ensure erasure. In my own testing (having run cipher and attempting recovery using recurva) it takes approx 2-3 passes before files become unrecoverable, though I have noticed images seem more robust than executable files.

I usually run with flags /W (wipe unused space) and /S (for all sub directories). In terms of file types, lets say standard text files and some binaries.

Please do let me know if you guys do any research into this, I would be highly interested in seeing your results.