Answer Line: Wipe Your Drive Clean of All Its Sensitive Data
Wipe Your Drive Clean of All Its
Sensitive DataI'm replacing
my hard drive. How do I totally obliterate sensitive data on the old drive?
Jim Mercer, via the InternetTo truly erase data, you need to write over
it. Simply deleting files or reformatting the drive won't do. Luckily, plenty
of free and inexpensive wipe programs (also known as shredders) can cover the
data with zeroes or random patterns, making it unreadable by data-restoration
software.Some machines can recover data that's been written over only one
or two times, however. That's where secure delete standards, such as the
Department of Defense 5220.22-M, come in. According to this specification,
overwriting the drive sectors three times with specific, different characters
constitutes one pass. Many experts recommend seven such passes to render the
data completely unrecoverable. But reading data that has been overwritten by
even the simplest shredders requires expensive hardware, so unless you're
worried about professional sleuths, such thorough overwriting probably isn't
necessary. Keep in mind that deleting just the sensitive files
may not protect you fully. Unidentified copies of those files could exist in
"unused" parts of your hard drive, or in your swap file, among other possible
locations. It's a good idea to wipe these areas of your drive as well--or go
the surefire route and wipe your entire hard drive. (See "Hard
Drives Exposed" for more on the dangers of unwiped hard
drives.)To clean up specific files (none holding state secrets)
and the drive's free space, rely on Summit Computer's free Hard Disk Scrubber
2. To be extra cautious, check
Heavy Scrub to write over the disk three times
(see
FIGURE 1). Visit
Summit to download
your copy.A more powerful option is Jetico's $40 BCWipe 3,
which adds 5220.22-M support and cleans up unused space in the swap file. Visit
Jetico to
download the trial version.To wipe the entire drive, I
recommend LSoft Technologies' free Active@ KillDisk or its $30 sibling, Active@
KillDisk Professional. The DOS programs load from a bootable floppy and
overwrite every partition on the hard drive. The free version does a basic
wipe, covering the drive with zeroes in one pass. Professional adds
5220.22-M-compliant wiping, and it will make as many passes as you like.
Wiping takes time, however. On my test system, KillDisk took
more than 12 hours to complete one pass of a 13GB drive. The recommended seven
passes could take days. You can download the freeware version from our Downloads library, or head to the vendor's site to buy the
Professional version.Archive Outlook and OE MailHow do I archive mail from Outlook Express on a separate disc so
that I can retrieve it later? Abe Kravitz, New YorkThis technique works in both Outlook and
Outlook Express: Open Windows Explorer and create a new folder, whether on your
hard drive, a network, or a CD-R disc. Now open your mail client and select the
messages you want to archive, or choose a folder and press
Ctrl-A to archive everything in it. Drag
the messages out of your e-mail program and into the folder you just created in
Explorer. Each message becomes either an .eml (Internet E-Mail Message) file or
an .msg (Outlook Item) file, depending on your e-mail client. In your e-mail
program, press
Delete to get rid of the messages, or
select the folder and delete that.To access an archived message, double-click the message file or
drag it from the archive folder into a mail folder.Easier Euro SymbolsIn my December 2002 column, I offered easy ways
to type the euro symbol in Windows and Office applications. Reader Rick
Richards of Oakville, Ontario, points out that Microsoft Word already has a
quick and simple way to do it: Press
Ctrl-Alt-E. This is strictly a Word
solution--it doesn't even work in Excel (although Excel supports the euro
symbol when you format a cell to display numbers as currency). And like the two
options I described in December, this method works only if you're using a font
that supports the symbol.Send your questions to
answer@pcworld.com. Answer Line
pays $50 for published items. Click here for more Answer Line
columns. You'll find Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector's humorous writing at
The Link Inspector.
