Computer Articles - Internet and Computer News » Free Tool

dBan

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:10:11 +0000

Over three years ago my web developer at Refresh Creations wrote an article which I published dealing with the question of formatting a hard drive so that the contents were completely unrecoverable. Whether you plan to sell your computer on at the end of its life, recycle it, give it to charity or even chuck it at the tip, it is imperative that you dispose of any potentially sensitive data on the hard drive.

I try not to recycle articles however meeting people on a weekly basis who would more than happily sell a computer on eBay after having simply used Windows to delete their old data has convinced me that in this instance it is necessary.

“
With data security becoming a greater issue on a daily basis it’s important to make sure that you securely remove all your data from your hard drives before you decide to sell your hard drive or donate it towards a charity of your choice. For a great amount of time there have been programs available which can miraculously restore data from a damaged floppy disk, with being the token computer guy in the house at university and still people using this decidedly unreliable format I became familiar with the programs used for restoring corrupted or deleted data from the diskettes.

Technically, just deleting a file isn’t sufficient to get rid of it permanently; when you delete a file from say Windows XP or any other OS you’re not truly deleting the file. To understand this you need to have a rough idea of how file allocation tables work (this is based on the current format of your hard drive). Unfortunately formatting the drive isn’t necessarily sufficient as data can still be relatively easily restored using an unformatting program which are available readily on the Internet.

If you’re intent on selling the drive off to a 3rd party personally I’d recommend the free tool DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) which is used for securely erasing all data from your hard drive, making recovery of previous data from your drive nigh-on-impossible. DBAN performs a military grade format on your hard drive, conforming to American DOD (Department of Defence) standards.

DBAN is more effective than the conventional Windows format as it performs multiple passes over the hard drive, on each pass it will randomly flip each binary bit from a zero to a one or vice versa to completely scramble all the data on the drive. Multiple passes are required so traces of the old data are more difficult to detect. DBAN is a small, free piece of software which can be downloaded from http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Note it’s name “BOOT AND NUKE” – The CD that you create will be bootable when you turn on the computer with CD booting enabled the program will load automatically and if you’re not careful you will lose ALL data on the drive. This includes the OS and anything else on the drive – ALL data means ALL the data.

Ryan Carson, Refresh Creations Ltd
“

DBAN

admin — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:09:36 +0000

My business partner at our webdesign company Refresh Creations recently started talking to me about wiping all data from a computer that I was set to sell on eBay. The computer in question had a fair amount of sensitive information on it and he seemed horrified that I was just going to wipe the hard disk using a Windows format and then sell it on.

For all intensive purposes what I was about to do would have been fine but to be on the safe side he introduced me to a piece of software which does a much more thorough job. I thought it might be prudent for him to talk my Click readers through this program as it could certainly come in useful for anyone looking to sell their computer or hard drive on the second hand market.

“

With data security becoming a greater issue on a daily basis it’s important to make sure that you securely remove all your data from your hard drives before you decide to sell your hard drive or donate it towards a charity of your choice. For a great amount of time there have been programs available which can miraculously restore data from a damaged floppy disk, with being the token computer guy in the house at university and still people using this decidedly unreliable format I became familiar with the programs used for restoring corrupted or deleted data from the diskettes.

Technically just deleting a file isn’t sufficient to get rid of it permanently; when you delete a file from say Windows XP or any other OS you’re not truly deleting the file. To understand this you need to have a rough idea of how file allocation tables work (this is based on the current format of your hard drive). Unfortunately formatting the drive isn’t necessarily sufficient as data can still be relatively easily restored using an unformatting program which are available readily on the Internet.

DBAN is more effective than the conventional Windows format as it performs multiple passes over the hard drive, on each pass it will randomly flip each binary bit from a zero to a one or vice versa to completely scramble all the data on the drive. Multiple passes are required so traces of the old data are more difficult to detect. DBAN is a small, free piece of software which can be downloaded from http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Note it’s name “BOOT AND NUKE” – The CD that you create will be bootable when you turn on the computer with CD booting enabled the program will load automatically and if you’re not careful you will lose ALL data on the drive. This includes the OS and anything else on the drive – ALL data means ALL the data.

“

My thanks go to Ryan Carson for providing this article. Please do be careful with this utility as careless use can cause a loss of data which neither myself, Ryan or the Herald Express will be held responsible.

Google Toolbar

admin — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 17:32:16 +0000

As many of my readers will know, Google is by far my favourite search engine and a free tool that has been available for all users of Google for some time now certainly deserves a mention in Click. The Google toolbar which is available from http://toolbar.google.com/ is a small utility which integrates and becomes an add in for Internet Explorer which adds a number of features to your browsing experience. Some of which I’ve highlighted below:

- Pop up blocker: By far my favourite feature; quite simply the Google toolbar sits in the background and prevents websites from popping windows up whilst you’re browsing the Internet. These windows are more than likely to contain adverts and they’re also more than likely to annoy you so this is definitely something worth activating. Of course, if you do want a website to be allowed to pop up a window then you can temporarily disable this blocker by holding down the button.

- Web searcher: Wherever you are on the Internet, whatever page you are on, you can just type a search term into the toolbar, select to search the whole Internet or just the site you’re on and hit go to be taken to a page that displays the results of your search. Any terms you’ve searched for that exists on the page returned by Google can also be easily highlighted so you can determine its relevance.

- Automatic form filling: You can program the toolbar with your name, address, phone number etc and then whenever there is a form on the Internet to fill in you simply click a button and it does it all for you. If you do a lot of shopping online then this becomes extremely helpful.

- Google Page Rank tool: As explained in the last couple of articles, a websites ‘importance’ in Googles eyes can be determined by looking at its page rank. The page rank for every page you visit is clearly displayed in the Google toolbar; this is especially important if you’re looking into optimising your websites search engine ranking and wish to check out your own page or your competitors.

Of course, the features of the Google toolbar are all fully configurable and there are several other features and shortcuts and are accessible. Essentially, it’s a free of charge, small and helpful utility which is certainly worth downloading; if you don’t find it useful then it can always be installed then all you’ve wasted is 30 seconds downloading it!