Hard to clear
I have just left my previous employer, and have to return a Windows PC I used at home. I am sure there must be many people in the same situation who need to expurgate all personal material. Can it ever be completely wiped?
Name and address supplied
Marwest14@yahoo.com
Jack Schofield replies: The answer depends to some extent on how much time and money someone is willing to put into recovering it. Even data that has been overwritten several times is recoverable in forensics laboratories. That is why some organisations demand the physical destruction of the drive.
Deleting files does not erase them, it only removes the information the operating system uses to find and load them. The files are still there and it may be relatively simple to undelete them. To delete them more securely, you need to overwrite the disk sectors where the data are stored. There are lots of programs that will overwrite files a selected number of times: see the section on Disk Cleaners at Dave Central. BCWipe, East-Tec Eraser and Terminus should suit most people, but all require a later version of Windows than your 3.1. However, you could use WipeDisk. I think the best approach, when returning a PC, is to delete all known files, reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.
To reformat the hard drive, boot the PC into DOS from a start-up floppy containing the format.exe file and type Format C: or, better, Format C: \s\v (see www.ehow.com/eHow/eHow/0,1053,6026,00.html).
Josh Goldfoot's FlameFile is a free utility that will destroy files on a Mac. It can be downloaded from http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10248-100-879663.html. If you want to take this further, read Peter Guttman's paper on the Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory at http://wipe.sourceforge.net/secure_del.html, or visit his excellent website at www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001.
Free idisk
Your article on online storage (May 31) obviously proved too popular. I registered for Idrive and awaited my confirming email. It arrived to tell me the service is no longer available!
Gaye Barrett
barrettg169@thegrid.org.uk
JS: It was bad timing, but online storage places come and go. Idrive, MySpace and Juston are just a few examples. Idrive's "sideload" and "save to Idrive" features made it special, when they worked, but recently, that wasn't often. Online drives tend to be useless, because they rely on flaky "applets".
If not, they may soon become useless because of overuse (eg for distributing pirate software, music files and pornography). One of the few free ones that keeps working reasonably well, in spite of various ups and downs, is one I have recommended before: Yahoo briefcase. But it does have a 5MB maximum file size, which may be a problem for some people. Yahoo has just started to beta test software that maps your briefcase to your Windows desktop.
Alternatives include CC Drive in the UK and OO Drive in France.
De-capped
How can I disable - and preferably destroy permanently - my caps lock key? tHANKS!
Alasdair Mackenzie
info@asylumaid.org.uk
JS: There is a free program, AntiCapsLock Lite v1.0, which disables Caps Lock. You can download it from www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000W1U,.html. Also, if you have a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, I am told that pressing the Windows logo key with S toggles the caps lock key on and off. Finally, you could buy a Happy Hacking keyboard. No hacker would ever hit the caps lock key except by mistake, so it makes more sense just to leave it off the keyboard. There is a good selection for both PCs and Macs at www.pfuca.com/products/hhkb/hhkbindex.html.
Web store
Over the years I have saved more than 600 web pages using Save As in Internet Explorer, and keep them in a folder on my desktop. I now wish to browse through them without having to load each one individually into Internet Explorer. Is there a program like ACDSee that recognises the number of items in a folder and lets you quickly scan through web pages using forward and backward arrows?
Paul Offenbach
paulofnorfolk@hotmail.com
JS: Asksam distributes Surf Saver, which creates a database of web pages you can flick through. It is a development of the Asksam program, which I use, and which is loved by many American journalists. You can download a free copy for the PC from www.surfsaver.com.
If saving pages separately, you can now Save As using Internet Explorer's Web Archive (*.mht) format, which saves each page as a single file. It avoids a lot of confusing mess.
Write back
Steve Doughty, commenting on the SULFNBK.EXE virus hoax, points out that instead of deleting the file, you could simply have renamed it to stop it working. I tend to do that by adding .old to the end of the name. Since Windows uses the three letters after the dot to decide how to run or load a file, this disables it (unless, as Steve says, some clever virus writer decides to search the drive for .old files and change them to .exe). Either way, if you decide to delete a file that may be essential, you should back it up (eg copy it to a floppy) first.
