Tuesday, December 9, 2008

How to Degauss Hard Drive

According to Wikipedia, “Degaussing is the process of decreasing or eliminating an unwanted magnetic field.” For layman like us it would appear to be something big… so for our understanding, degauss is to erase data stored in magnetic media like floppy disk, hard drives and magnetic tapes.

The degaussing machines used for used for erasing the data. They are special machines which are quite expensive. In a hard drive these machines create reverse magnetic field that jumbles the data there in the disk & makes it illegible. This is considered as the most secured way of destroying the data from hard drives. These days there are many companies offering degauss machines available in the market. Some of the benefits of automatic degauss hard drives:

* Erases hard drives securely

* Both manual and remote control operation hard drives are available

* High speed for complete erasure

* Convenient tabletop design

How does a degausser work?

The hard disk is basically placed into the eraser. The lid is closed immediately. By pressing the degauss button, the command for erasing is given. The hard risk drives are completely exposed to the magnetic fields (level is very high). With less or no intervention (depending on needs of the machine), hard disk can be cleared.

Don’t worry your hard drive won’t be affected by this procedure. The computer won’t be able to recognize the computer. The impact of this erasure is strong enough that no reference orientation points.

Some people try to themselves degauss the hard drives themselves and at times damage the disk. This may delete important data which cannot be recovered at all. If you don’t want to degauss the hard disk yourself, then take the help of a company with the right machines

Friday, December 5, 2008

Prevent Data Theft from your PC

Data theft from any PC has become a common problem. Here are few tips that will help you prevent the risk of data theft.

* Never leave your laptop unattended.

* Install Firewall settings, anti spywares to prevent secure transfer of all the files and sensitive information.

* Use a secured password and not the general ones like “Computer”, “Mypass”, “123456”, etc. Try to alphanumeric combinations in your password.

* When you have completed the work on Internet then clear the “browser cache”. In Internet Explorer, clear the “history”.

* Always log out / sign out from the email account.

* There are many open source programs, which help in easy & secure transfer of data. Use them this will prevent the risk of data theft.

* Take up a back up of all the work you have done on the computer. You might also install an anti theft security system also.

* When you are away disable USB port device. This will help in disabling the USB storage devices like portable hard disk & pen drive from your computer. Hence, when you are away for a second from you PC then one cannot steal the important information and files.

For more information about steps to Prevent Data Theft from your PC, contact us now.

Data Security Solutions

Eraseyourharddrive aims to provide it customers the best data security and midrange processor maintenance solutions. Seeing the increase in number of hackers and virus attacks it becomes imperative for us to protect the interest of genuine users, and business houses. The needs of both (individuals and business entity) differ and therefore they would require. So to meet their demands pretty well we offer then with customized data security solutions. This includes business data security solutions, consumer’s data security solutions, ontrack data erasure and much more.

For business houses we do the networking of all computers and give limited access to the important information. Further, we have the capability of installing software that helps in tracking down the computer that is trying to hack the important document or planning to destroy it. Our proper and secure data protection & disposal services have benefited many including department of defense 5220.22-M. To know more about data security solutions, call us now.

Monday, November 10, 2008

How to erase hard drive completely??

Before recycling or disposing your old drive do not forget to remove sensitive data and make your hard drive secure. To completely obliterate sensitive data secure erase is another built in feature. Just deleting your files using delete action won’t delete your files from actual location. Formatting and erasing your hard drive will serve the purpose of obliterating sensitive data. Shredders programs will wipe your hard disk drive by covering with unidentified patterns of zeros and ones and this makes the drive unreadable for any software to restore with original data.


Protect your hard disk drives from professional sleuths.

Secure delete standards defined by DoD, Department of Defense 5220.22-M specifics that for secure erase of hard disk, drive sectors should be overwritten thrice with different patterns of zeros and ones and this is one pass. For highly secure data, hard disk drive should be overwritten till seven passes. But a hard disk drive that has undergone one pass is also at safer side because this also leaves the disk in unreadable format and to extract data from these sectors shredders need very costly hardware.

Remember, data are not just assigned physical location on the disk but are permanently associated with virtual memory and reside in some secure part of the hard disk, or in swap files or other locations. Most of us do not know of that disk drive has a built-in system for the secure erasure of data because this is disabled by motherboard BIOS. It is linked to Paging concept our operating system uses to store files on the disk by assigning a address and pointer and also swapping the location. Data remains on the disk sector even the data has been deleted from the physical location. Using file recovery programs data is retrieved from these locations. Proper disposition of this physical device is essential other wise you may become victim of various federal laws (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley) and you may then have to give penalties, or may result in civil suits. This secure erase writes on every single track on hard disk. Mac users have “Secure Empty Trash” option under Finder.

Visit my website for the latest on computer related news, erase hard drive software, wipe hard drive erasers, clean hard drive, identity theft.

Avoid Data Theft

Have you decided to upgrade your existing system or replace the existing one???

Wait!!! Do not be in hurry...some one might steal your PC data and you may be loosing your confidential information. Your system may contain some important information, some credit card information, passwords, t-pin numbers, other banking records and business details. May be you have deleted those before selling your PC but the reality is that these information still remains at inner level of your hard disk drive from where it can be retrieved.

Make sure that your data does not fall in the hands of any malicious person you may restore your deleted , previously recored data. Disk format is easy, secure and fast way of deleting data but again the security depends on the type of data that has been deleted.

In this blog we will discuss about various methods of formating, erasing hard disk drives, also about various technologies and methods of low level formats. My posting is not confined to hard disk drives but also network security and related topics.

Enjoy reading, we at erase your hard drive provide web-deployable erase hard drive, hard disk drive, clean hard drive, format hard drive, identity theft solutions.