Data safety under Windoze

[trochee]

A friend's computer-illiterate dad asked me "how can I protect myself from the company I'm leaving? I have to give back their laptop, and I've saved all the data I want off it, but I want to be sure they don't pull things off there to use out of context in our ugly separation struggles."

After I gave him the short version of the story about (1) don't use Windows (too late) and (2) don't use your work computer for things you don't want work to read (too late also!), I agreed to look into solutions.

I found the Eraser -- an open-source (GNU-licensed) Windows disk scrubber. This seems like a useful tool for everybody who has to work with Windows sometimes. I don't run Windows, so if anybody reading this does and wants to try this out, please let me know what your experience is. Alternative recommendations are also welcome.

Comments

bcwipe

[bryan-e.livejournal.com]

I have used bcwipe (http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe.htm) on both Windows and *nix. It uses Peter Gutmann's algorithm, described here (http://wipe.sourceforge.net/secure_del.html) for secure wiping.