http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949 You have multiple files that you decide you want to get rid of. So, you right-click and select 'Delete' and then it's gone, right? Wrong. This is because files on your computer are accessed through a file allocation table, which tells the operating system where in your disk a file can be found. These are marked on the file allocation table by it's identifier. When you delete a file you are not really deleting it off your computer, but are instead simply removing it's entry on the file allocation table so that the computer can no longer access it. This brings us to the second step, how can we securely and safely remove this information? To understand this we can approach it from two different methods, either locking it up with an un-crackable password, or attempting to rid it. In my opinion I would say it is much safer to remove something rather than lock it up in a cubicle. The process securely removing information happens when you can remove it and write it over with bits of random data multiple times. However, it is difficult for the average uneducated computer user to differentiate between how many is not enough. 7 passes is the national standard for the U.S. government, the NSA, and many different branches of the U.S. government. 8 passes is the national standard for Canada's government. Well since the government uses this many it must really work, right? Wrong again. 7 or 8 passes is nothing to break, the most passes that has ever been recovered by the U.S government is 14 passes. That being said, Britian's national standard for overwritting files is 38. It seems we are still behind in the times as far as some areas are concerned. Well someone then said &quot;Enough is enough, we can fix this problem!&quot; that someone is the infamous Peter Gutman. And so came the 'Gutman Method'. The Gutman Method just not only overwrites data with 35 passes, but it does much more than that. Of course this discussion could be an article all in it's own. You may be thinking &quot;Well this is nice information, but how do I utilize this technique to my own advantage?&quot; Well to answer that question there are a number of applications you can use to securely erase files, and yes, even your entire hard drive. The best option to erase files is a nice program called &quot;Window Washer&quot;. This application is created by the same company who created the Anti-Spyware program I've mentioned in my previous articles, SpySweeper. With Window Washer you can select between Quick method(1 pass), DoD(7 passes), NSA(14 passes), Gutman(35 passes), and Random(you select your own number of passes manually). Window Washer also gives you the option of creating a bootable disk to wipe your HDD with the same methods listed above. However, I highly highly recommend something called &quot;Darik's Boot and Nuke&quot; or DBAN. This is a boot disk that gives you the passes mentioned above, while giving you different methods of magnetic wiping methods. Pretty much the idea here is that if you can pile tons of useless information onto something it becomes unreadable. And rightfully so. However, it isn't a fool-proof method of erasing anything. Sure, there is probably no way to recover something has been passed over, say, 60 times. But if you want a 0% chance of your data not being recovered is to cut it up, set it on fire, blow it up, and scatter it in 5,000 pieces in different places around the world. And even then, who knows? You have multiple files that you decide you want to get rid of. So, you right-click and select 'Delete' and then it's gone, right? Wrong. This is because files on your computer are accessed through a file allocation table, which tells the operating system where in your disk a file can be found. These are marked on the file allocation table by it's identifier. When you delete a file you are not really deleting it off your computer, but are instead simply removing it's entry on the file allocation table so that the computer can no longer access it. This brings us to the second step, how can we securely and safely remove this information? To understand this we can approach it from two different methods, either locking it up with an un-crackable password, or attempting to rid it. In my opinion I would say it is much safer to remove something rather than lock it up in a cubicle. The process securely removing information happens when you can remove it and write it over with bits of random data multiple times. However, it is difficult for the average uneducated computer user to differentiate between how many is not enough. 7 passes is the national standard for the U.S. government, the NSA, and many different branches of the U.S. government. 8 passes is the national standard for Canada's government. Well since the government uses this many it must really work, right? Wrong again. 7 or 8 passes is nothing to break, the most passes that has ever been recovered by the U.S government is 14 passes. That being said, Britian's national standard for overwritting files is 38. It seems we are still behind in the times as far as some areas are concerned. Well someone then said &quot;Enough is enough, we can fix this problem!&quot; that someone is the infamous Peter Gutman. And so came the 'Gutman Method'. The Gutman Method just not only overwrites data with 35 passes, but it does much more than that. Of course this discussion could be an article all in it's own. You may be thinking &quot;Well this is nice information, but how do I utilize this technique to my own advantage?&quot; Well to answer that question there are a number of applications you can use to securely erase files, and yes, even your entire hard drive. The best option to erase files is a nice program called &quot;Window Washer&quot;. This application is created by the same company who created the Anti-Spyware program I've mentioned in my previous articles, SpySweeper. With Window Washer you can select between Quick method(1 pass), DoD(7 passes), NSA(14 passes), Gutman(35 passes), and Random(you select your own number of passes manually). Window Washer also gives you the option of creating a bootable disk to wipe your HDD with the same methods listed above. However, I highly highly recommend something called &quot;Darik's Boot and Nuke&quot; or DBAN. This is a boot disk that gives you the passes mentioned above, while giving you different methods of magnetic wiping methods. Pretty much the idea here is that if you can pile tons of useless information onto something it becomes unreadable. And rightfully so. However, it isn't a fool-proof method of erasing anything. Sure, there is probably no way to recover something has been passed over, say, 60 times. But if you want a 0% chance of your data not being recovered is to cut it up, set it on fire, blow it up, and scatter it in 5,000 pieces in different places around the world. And even then, who knows? en-us Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:28:09 PDT Hey MS, I'm loving the series.&nbsp; I just had an issue with my girlfriend's computer.&nbsp; Someone had stuck a partition on her hard drive that was jamming things up.&nbsp; I cleaned the space and deleted the partition, but Acrobat reader had been on there.&nbsp; Tried to reinstall Acrobat, but the file table was still pointing to components on the D Drive.&nbsp; Really frustrating.&nbsp; I finally repartitioned the drive so the the computer could look and see nothing was there and install a fresh version.<br /> <br /> Anyway, is there a cleaner way I could've done this? http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70314 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70314 Hey MS, I'm loving the series.&nbsp; I just had an issue with my girlfriend's computer.&nbsp; Someone had stuck a partition on her hard drive that was jamming things up.&nbsp; I cleaned the space and deleted the partition, but Acrobat reader had been on there.&nbsp; Tried to reinstall Acrobat, but the file table was still pointing to components on the D Drive.&nbsp; Really frustrating.&nbsp; I finally repartitioned the drive so the the computer could look and see nothing was there and install a fresh version.<br /> <br /> Anyway, is there a cleaner way I could've done this? TomW, perhaps. Maybe you might have been able to use System Restore to restore back to the point before you installed acrobat reader(if you were able to rememeber when that was). Maybe if you could go onto the other partition and format it without re-installing anything, then delete it, then go back to your original partition. I'm not 100% sure to be honest but that sounds like a logical solution in my honest opinion. http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70380 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70380 TomW, perhaps. Maybe you might have been able to use System Restore to restore back to the point before you installed acrobat reader(if you were able to rememeber when that was). Maybe if you could go onto the other partition and format it without re-installing anything, then delete it, then go back to your original partition. I'm not 100% sure to be honest but that sounds like a logical solution in my honest opinion. System restore would've gone back to before I'd deleted the partion, and I had spent hours and hours moving files and reinstalling everything that had been on D.&nbsp; I'm just leaving D at 10 MB now in case there are any other issues like this. http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70420 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70420 System restore would've gone back to before I'd deleted the partion, and I had spent hours and hours moving files and reinstalling everything that had been on D.&nbsp; I'm just leaving D at 10 MB now in case there are any other issues like this. What is an index file and how do you read it? http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70826 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70826 What is an index file and how do you read it? <p>What an index file is and whether you can read it depends upon what application the file is for.</p> <p>If it's a database index file, it is a key list of all the records in the database for sorting and faster access to the record requested.</p> <p>If it's an operating system index file, it's used for the same thing as a database index file and also for recording the area on the hard drive where the indexed information is physically located. It can't be read unless you know the machine language the file is written in, and even then the information is pretty much worthless.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70861 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MSgherzi/6949/#c_70861 <p>What an index file is and whether you can read it depends upon what application the file is for.</p> <p>If it's a database index file, it is a key list of all the records in the database for sorting and faster access to the record requested.</p> <p>If it's an operating system index file, it's used for the same thing as a database index file and also for recording the area on the hard drive where the indexed information is physically located. It can't be read unless you know the machine language the file is written in, and even then the information is pretty much worthless.</p>