November 2005
Erasing Your Hard Drive |
If you have considered giving away an old PC, please be sure to completely and properly wipe out any data on it. The majority of the time, credit card numbers, and personal documents are still left on the PC and are left completely recoverable. It is a general misconception that deleting data and then cleaning out the recycle bin does a sufficient job. However, this is not the case. When you delete something in windows, it just marks it to be overwritten. Another misconception is that formatting a hard drive permanently erases stored data. In reality, a format just reconstructs the allocation table and checks the block on the disk but does nothing to actually remove the data. It simply leaves it unprotected. The risk in both these misconceptions is that a highly skilled computer user with the right resources can recover this data that was considered unrecoverable or deleted. |
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So what can you do to permanently delete this data? Well, the easiest way is to physically destroy your hard drive. This is probably the cheapest way as well. An expensive way to perform this is to take it to a PC repair store that has a degausser
that removes all the
magnetism from the drive
leaving it useless for good. Another proposed solution is
that you can write Zeros to
the drive with the utilities
at the hard drive
manufacturer’s site and that
would stop most people, but
still leaving moderate
possibility for an
experienced user to recover
it. Your best bet would be
to be to acquire one of the
many disk wipe programs
available on the market. Some of these programs will
allow you to specify the
character to use to
over-write (wipe0 the entire
disk.) A better solution is
to choose one of the
programs that offer what is
commonly known as a
DOD-wipe. This type of wipe
is used by the US Dept. of
Defense to wipe classified
hard drives. Essentially,
this type of wipe overwrites
your drive several times
(usually 3), each time with
a different character. For
people who are really
worried about not leaving
any data on the their hard
drive, there are several
even more powerful wipe
algorithms available that
will overwrite a drive 25 or
more times. Here are two
free applications that will
help wipe data on your hard
drive to an unrecoverable
state:
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5 Ways to Back Up Your Data |
Data on your hard drive is often times the most important thing anyone can have on their computer. Therefore, it is very essential and critical to make sure it is backed up in case something disastrous should happen to your hard drive. Here are five proposed methods of backing up your data.
External Hard Drives are very useful when your computer contains excessively large amounts of data. These drives are simply like the hard drives built in your computer, however, they are external, and require either a USB 2.0 or Ethernet connection for usage. These hard drives can range anywhere from 80 GB, to 120 GB to 160 GB. Many of these devices attempt to simplify the means of backing up your data by providing software that will guide you or automatically perform the backup on the necessary data. |
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CD and DVD Writers/Re-Writers
have become a very efficient,
useful and inexpensive way to
back up your data and transfer
it to about almost any
computer. CD writers may
not have the ability to
perform a full back up;
nonetheless, its 700 MB
capacity generally proves to
be ample for archiving any
files that are very important.
DVD’s on the other hand are
even better now that their
prices have fallen, and their
limit has soared to almost 8.5
GB per DVD. DVDs not
only hold this large amount of
data, but also have the
ability of being able to burn
both CDs and DVDs – a great
and reliable method.
External Hard Drives are very
useful when your computer
contains excessively large
amounts of data. These
drives are simply like the
hard drives built in your
computer, however, they are
external, and require either a
USB 2.0 or Ethernet connection
for usage. These hard
drives can range anywhere from
80 GB, to 120 GB to 160 GB.
Many of these devices attempt
to simplify the means of
backing up your data by
providing software that will
guide you or automatically
perform the backup on the
necessary data.
Additional Hard Drives are another means of backing up your data. Through this method, you can simply add another hard drive to your system and the process isn’t very difficult, but it does require a basic understanding of the inner working of a computer in order to install it. For advanced users, it would mean installing a RAID 1 array, which requires two hard drives of the same size to be installed onto a RAID controller. These will then mirror each other, and in the event that one hard drive were to fail, the system would continue to run on the remaining good drive, consequently notifying the user that one drive may need to be replaced.
Online Storage is the last proposed option as a means of backing up your data. There are several online services that allow you to upload your files to a server for safe keeping. These servers provide tight security for their services; however, they do charge a monthly rate for this service. This is a lot more expensive when compared to the other options. The speed of your internet connection also plays a major role in the convenience of your back up. However, it is generally a good enough option to perform the task of backing up your data. All of these options can be applied by users without much complication. Performing a back up on your system’s data is always a great idea in the event of loss of data. |
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Who invented the Smiley Face? |
Ever wonder who was responsible for the little yellow smiley faces that people often use to spice up their emails? Well, according to Mike Jones, a researcher at Microsoft, he traced the smile face back to a Carnegie Mellon University computer bulletin board posting by a student, Scott Fahlman, on September 19, 1982. |
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“People were making sarcastic comments in posts, others were taking them more seriously than they were intended and silly arguments were breaking out,” the student recalls. Thus, Scott Fahlman, suggested on one of the CMU boards that people unambiguously label comments that were not meant to be serious with a :-) glyph and with a :-( for things that were not meant to be funny. These two faces alongside all the other numerous variations soon after became a worldwide whim and are now better known as “emoticons,” which is word that combines both “emotions” and icons.” |
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