2469.aspx

Cool Tool: BCWipe

I recently got a new external hard disk and gave my old one to a colleague. I made sure that all personal data was removed from it first using BCWipe. Deleting the files is not enough as it only removes the file from the file system "index". The files can easily be recovered by a recover utility. Formatting is better but not as good as wiping a disk. Wiping a file, or disk, writes over the data many times with "random" data to make it close to impossible recover the original data.

BCWipe (Windows , Unix) is a free tool that allows you to delete your data and make sure it cannot be recovered. It has several useful features:

• Delete with wiping


• Wipe free disk space


• Wipe Swap File


• Wipe Empty Directory Entries


• Wipe File Slacks

BCWipe v.3 is a powerful set of utilities which complies with options to invoke either the US DoD 5200.28-STD standard or the Peter Gutmann wiping scheme. You can also create and use your own customized wiping scheme to wipe sensitive information from storage devices installed on your computer

Jetico also has a commercial product for encrypting data on the fly: BestCrypt. It creates a virtual disk and encrypts all contents on it. I have used it on NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 for storing sensitive data, but have moved to poSecrets as it allows me to share my “secrets“ between my Pocket PC and my laptop.