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Feature Review - Active@ Killdisk ver. 9.0

By MICHAEL FINDLEY, technology blogger

Feature Review - Active@ Killdisk ver. 9.0

To follow up my overall review of KillDisk ver. 9.0, I’m writing this review to bring to light some of the cool features KillDisk offers.

Features:

  • Disk information
  • Methods of disk wiping
  • Certificate
  • Stopping and queuing of jobs
  • Advanced features

Disk information:

The first thing that intrigued me about this software is how much information was pouring out of it. As you could imagine, the software needs to know a bunch of information about your disk before wiping it.

What I found pretty cool is that this software find that information and it shares it with you. Active@ KillDisk will tell you everything, ranging from free/used space and the file system to even the serial number of the hard drive.

This is handy when keeping track of devices and learning that information about them without needing to open up your computer or fussing around. It will even do an integrity check and tell you what the status of that is on your storage device.

Methods of Disk Wiping:

As a disk wiping tool, this is probably KillDisk’s most crucial feature – giving you the option of how you want to wipe your disk. The list is extensive, ranging from the U.S. Department of Defence standard to the Peter Gutmann method, which includes 35 passes and a verification. As the method becomes more complicated, the time it takes to wipe the disk grows, but that’s the price you need to pay for data security.

Certificate:

Upon completing a disk wipe using Active@ KillDisk, you are given a certificate you can print out, giving the basic information of the wipe. This includes the serial number of your disk, the method used, and more. I can imagine it being very convenient if you use this software a lot on different hard drives, you can print off these certificates and tape them to the hard drives to organize things.

Stopping and Queuing of jobs:

While one disk is being “killed”, you can still browse around your system and see what other devices you’d like to wipe, then queue them up to be erased afterwards. This means if you’ve got something deleting, your computer is not rendered useless; you can still do other stuff. If at any point you decide to stop a job, you can simply hit the ‘stop’ button and continue the disk wipe later.

Advanced Features:

There are a ton of features in this software that would take a while to go over, so download the free trial version and explore for yourself!

Active@ KillDisk. Protect your at-risk data

By MICHAEL FINDLEY, technology blogger

Protect your at-risk data with Active@ KillDisk

This review is for Active@ KillDisk, an excellently designed program for erasing or wiping disks. This program first came onto my radar as it is a cheap and easy to use option for wiping spare disks. By cheap, I mean ranging from freeware and up.

The freeware version comes with a load of features. You are able to wipe or erase disks with a one-pass of zeros. Wiping disks allows you to clear the empty space on your drive without touching your files. Erasing disks can overwrite all your files on the drive. You can also use this program to wipe USB devices, even those formatted to work with Apple computers. This program can be run off of a bootable disc or USB drive, if you need to wipe your current hard drive.

The ease of use is what really stands out for me. Anyone can grab the freeware and quickly wipe a disk. The website offers simple instructions, from setting up the software or bootable disks, to erasing disks. Everything about this program is straightforward and easy to navigate. Erasing disks used to take ages to perform, but can actually be done fairly quickly using KillDisk. Of course, the length of time this takes will depend on the size of the drive, but size is not a limitation. KillDisk can wipe drives over 2 TB.

The issue with the freeware version is that current programs, including some of the LSoft's other excellent programs, are able to recover data which has been deleted off a drive. A single pass of zeros over a drive is not really enough to stop someone who looking to access your deleted information.

The professional version of ACTIVE@ KillDisk comes with 20 standard methods of erasing and wiping drives. This includes the US Department of Defense's 5220.22 standard.

This standard goes far above and beyond a single pass of zeros, as it "overwrite[s] all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and [verifies]" With the professional version users are able to verify the deletion of data off a drive, ensuring maximum security. I definitely recommend the professional version to ensure others will never have access your confidential files.

Try out the freeware version to get a feel for the program. Personally, I love being able to try something before I buy it. I believe KillDisk's freeware version is a great introduction to the ease-of-use one can find in all of LSoft's programs. Once you try it, I bet that you will be impressed by the basic functions. The professional version far surpasses the freeware. It offers what is, in my opinion, a necessary tool to own in the information age to protect your at-risk data.

Active@ KillDisk for Linux System

By Jatin Patel, technology blogger

Active@ KillDisk for Linux

Active@ KillDisk for Linux System is software that helps in erasing confidential data or information from your hard drive partially or completely. This data can be removed permanently.

It is widely used for securing the formatting of the hard drives. It is one of the most effective and powerful hard disk wiping tools. You can destroy your data on USB drives and floppy disks using Active@ KillDisk. This software is very easy to use and highly reliable in using unused space perfectly.

It does not erase already present files and folders. It simply makes your system unable to recover the previously deleted files. The process of erasing the data does not harm your already installed apps and existing data. You can permanently delete the data by selecting the specific international standards or you can use your own custom settings for this process. It must be performed based on your needs.

Destroy Your Sensitive Data Forever

Just deleting the files or data may leave the unwanted data for recovery anytime. Unlike the range of software, Active@ KillDisk for Linux software offers you a service to ensure the deletion of data securely and permanently from the drives and makes it completely unrecoverable.

It saves your lot of time and effort as you just require making few clicks and get the remarkable outcome. The well-explained and intuitive features provided by this software enable you to perform erasing process with easy to understand and easy-to-access step by step instructions.

The range of advanced methods is used for data encryption which usually encourages hackers to extract the confidential data from the database without even getting other party aware of it. They mostly attack the location of data where it is temporarily stored.

The most preferred path of these attackers is to recover the data from the unused hard drive. So, to keep your data safe and secure from such attackers, it is very important to destroy that data permanently. The hard drive eraser software, Active@ KillDisk for Linux software, makes you able to perform this task with great ease. It ensures never to recover data from different types of drives where it is used.

Do not get frustrated when using Active@ KillDisk for Linux to wipe the hard drive space or to delete the confidential data, the complete process takes much time especially on larger hard disks.

So, have patience and let the software does its work. You can find range of versions of this erasing tool that provides you a facility to keep your hard drive secured and safe with their numerous exclusive features.

Features

The below given some of the main features of Active@ KillDisk for Linux help you to make out what this software will perform on your system and allow you to utilize your unused space effectively and securely.

  • It is the most compact and fastest hard drive eraser
  • It performs wiping or erasing task of number of disks simultaneously
  • Its absolute new feature includes previewing and wiping of NTFS, exFAT, Linux Ext2/Ext3/Ext4, & Apple HFS+
  • It has a Boot Disk Creator for USB exclusively for Windows and Linux
  • It securely overwrites and destroys all data on physical drive or logical partition, Erase hard drive partitions, logical drives and unused disk using data destruction method
  • It has the ability to erase number of partitions, logical drives and unused space on your hard drive simultaneously (disks being erased in parallel)
  • It completely supports IDE / ATA / SATA / SSD / SCSI hard disk drives as well as LUN / RAID Disk Arrays
  • It helps you to save the log-in and shut down options after the completion of erase process
  • It can incorporate the customized logo and other information into particular erase or wipe hard drive certificate
  • You can even perform data verification after completing the erasing
  • It allows you to confirm the erase/wipe two times to avoid any kind of accidental erasing of data on a drive

Apart from its unique features, this Linux software also has a command line mode that gives you the permission to start the erase hard drive process automatically.

When in command line mode, you can perform several operations. You can select the drive which you want to erase such as USB drives, floppy drives, hard drives or any other drive.

If you do not want to continue erase hard drive process, you can cancel it. You can also specify what type of data destruction method you want to follow. You can even show or hide the error messages if you get any.

You require below mentioned system requirements if you want to use Active@ KillDisk

  • IBM PC compatible machine
  • Intel x86 or x64
  • 36 Mb of RAM
  • 800 x 600 pixels of VGA resolution
  • CD/DVD/Blu-ray disk, or USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 storage device to boot from
  • IDE / ATA / SSD / SATA / eSATA / SCSI hard disk drives, or any kind of removable device to be erased

So, whenever you sell your system to someone else or has kept your any drive for long time without any use, it is advisable to permanently delete the stored personal or business data using highly powerful hard drive eraser software, Active@ KillDisk for Linux.

Advantages of LUN Arrays

By Richard Pardoe, technology blogger

The Advantages of LUN Arrays – And How To Perform LUN Erasure When the Time Comes

Data storage is absolutely crucial to the functioning of many businesses that operate in the technology sector and, indeed, those in many other industries too.

Volumes of business-critical data produced by companies are growing exponentially. Nowadays, it’s absolutely vital that your business has adequate storage for the safekeeping and analysis of crucial and potentially profitable data.

And although cloud storage has recently become very attractive, there’s still some data that you just can’t afford to have out there online.

Let’s take a look at one highly efficient method of local data storage – the LUN array.

Essentially, a LUN array consists a series of disk drives connected together by cable. More often than not, they’re housed in the same physical container. LUN arrays form part or all of a storage area network (SAN).

LUN stands for ‘Logical Unit Number’, and it’s the method by which drives are ordered. However, since a LUN array is made up of logical units, each unit is not necessarily a single, complete disk. The LUN array divides the total space in the array into logical units according to user configuration – therefore, the logical unit may in fact comprise a portion of one disk, or a top-heavy fraction of disks.

Advantages of LUN Arrays

It might not be obvious why dividing physical disks up in to logical units would be particularly useful, but there are a couple of main benefits:

Write Performance. LUN Arrays are quick! Data blocks are written to the cache as soon as they arrive, before they’re written to physical storage. You can write and access data more quickly than you would be able to in a storage system that was JBOD (“Just a bunch of disks”).

Reliability. LUN arrays have persistent data caching and are designed to withstand power outages. In fact, LUN arrays have occasionally been referred to as “the disks that cannot break”.

Management. Because of their virtual nature, storage space can be assigned remotely to different users without having to physically flip the SAN switches. Administrators can assign and reassign logical units of storage with ease.

Dealing With Your Data Once It’s Past Its Shelf Life, and Wiping Your LUN Array

Like it or not, in any business, data has a lifespan. There comes a time when you’ll need to get rid of your data – be that to make space for more relevant information, or to cleanse your storage setup for security purposes.

In most businesses, deleting data simply isn’t enough. You’ll need to wipe the disk entirely. This is especially true if your array has passed its use-by date, or is being moved to another part of the business where employees have different security privileges.

We’ve come up with a solution: KillDisk. We created this tool specifically for the purpose of wiping large volumes of data, and we built it to do so quickly and very thoroughly.

Real Deletion – Once it’s Gone, It’s Really Gone

At first glance, it seems like deleting data from your LUN array should be a non-issue. After all, why not just format all the hard drives? Well, it turns out that if you want to really wipe your data once and for all, formatting just doesn’t cut it.

Data can easily be recovered from formatted hard drives. Why? Because formatting actually only deletes the directory structure, leaving all the data on your disk. In fact, anyone with an out-of-the-box undelete tool can recover the data in a couple of clicks.

What you really need is your disk wiped. This is where KillDisk comes in. Unlike other tools, when you need your data gone, KillDisk actually deletes it forever. It uses a process known as ‘zeroing’, which involves setting every ‘bit’ on the hard disk to zero. It permanently wipes everything on your LUN array, so you needn’t worry about who might access it in future – there is literally no information left in storage.

Rapid Wiping

Of course, massive arrays of terabytes of data take a significant amount of time to completely wipe. We know how much unnecessary down-time hurts your business when you depend on technology, which is why KillDisk was built from the start with efficiency in mind.

Although durations will naturally vary, you could expect KillDisk to completely wipe a 45 terabyte LUN array in under 2.5 days – significantly faster than any other tool we’re aware of.

LUN erasure shouldn’t be a chore in itself – the quicker you can cleanse your storage network and start using it for its new purpose, the better. KillDisk makes that possible.

Effective and Efficient LUN Erasure

When it’s time to wipe your LUN array, you want the peace of mind in knowing that your data really is gone forever, and you want the erasure done as rapidly as possible.

We believe KillDisk is the tool for the job here – if you’d like to find out for yourself, please download our free trial. We think you’ll be glad you did.

How to erase hard drive?

By Henry Schwartz, technology blogger

Active@ KillDisk Review

Active@ KillDisk is another example of excellent software from LSoft Technologies Inc.

If you have not read my review on their Active@ File Recovery, LSoft is a Canada-based company that specialises in data security and utility software and releases quality, useful software that is very handy to have. Active@ KillDisk is specifically designed to do exactly the opposite of its' Active@File Recovery counterpart: to permanently delete data from a storage device, making it impossible to recover.

Using it:

Even before downloading this software, what I liked about this product is that LSoft tells you exactly what it does and how it does it.

From a curious user's point of view, I was fascinated by the information that LSoft provides surrounding their product and why I would want to use it.

Terms like "disk wiping" and "erasing" a disk were described to me and I got to feel like I knew exactly what I was getting with their product when they went over the disk wiping processes and algorithms. I won't go over that here, but you can see exactly what I mean on www.killdisk.com.

Much like Active@ File Recovery, KillDisk has a very simple user interface. It boots up, finds whatever memory or storage devices it can and displays them in a very "Windows Explorer"-esque fashion.

It even lets you browse through the different folders on your hard drive to make sure that you don't annihilate anything important by mistake.

You navigate through the list of storage devices, pick which ones you want to clean, then finally hit the button. Once you confirm that you want the data from whatever storage device you pick gone, consider it as good as new. No amount of file recovery software can help you from that point on.

Not even Active@ File Recovery. You will get an option to choose how you would like to erase your data beforehand, with an extensive list of different data erase methods, including a simple 1 pass method, or other methods that meet different, international, standards.

Functionality:

It works. I really don't think I need to say more. The process takes a bit of time (and I'm sure the more complex the disk erasing method you pick, the longer it takes), but it does what it is advertised to do and does it fairly well.

Bottom Line:

Overall, provided that you need this software, I would definitely recommend Active@ KillDisk. Possible times when this software may be useful for an everyday user that come to mind include donating old hard drives and cleaning it up before giving away, throwing out hard drives with important data and trying to make a hard drive like new. Honestly though, I think this software would be much more useful in the corporate world, where data security is actually an issue.

How to erase hard drive?

By Richard Pardoe technology blogger

Is Your Data Really Gone? (…And Why Formatting Doesn't Work!)

Erasing the data on your hard disk drive is actually harder than it sounds. A manual hard drive format doesn't in fact completely wipe your data. Even after formatting a drive multiple times, your data can still be recovered by someone who knows what they're doing.

If you have sensitive information that you need deleted, then the software that comes with your computer simply isn't enough to do the job.

To understand why it's actually quite difficult to erase data, it helps to know a little bit about how the information on your hard drive is structured.

Data is organized into different sectors, and is written to the hard disk in binary format. Each "bit" – the smallest unit of data on the disk – can either be in a "1" or "0" state. What makes this data readable, however, is the directory structure – and you can think of this as an address book, listing the location and type of all the different data on the disk.

Here's the thing: formatting only deletes the directory structure.

It leaves all of your sensitive data on the disk, which means that anyone who gets hold of your hard drive can easily utilize common undelete or unformat software to restore your data and have access to it. Scary stuff, right?

So if formatting doesn't work, can you ever really get rid of your data once and for all?

The Solution: Don't Just Delete, But Wipe

Luckily, the answer is yes. We've developed Active@ KillDisk, which is a premium software that removes all data from your disk drive, once and for all. Once Kill Disk is run, all data is destroyed permanently, and is completely unrecoverable.

This is known as "zero-ing" the hard drive, because it sets all bits to zero. There's no trace of your data left once Kill Disk is finished – and you can safely forget about what happens to your disk drive once KillDisk has done its job. Now, we'd be lying if we said KillDisk was the only piece of software that does this. It's not. But we developed it for a reason – quite simply, we weren't happy with anything else on the market.

Wiping a hard drive should be simple, with no learning curve. We designed KillDisk to be easy to use, saving you time and effort – there's no fiddling with different commands, and you can securely wipe your hard disk with just a few clicks.

Open source projects such as DBAN are certainly respectable disk wipers, and for technically-minded people who enjoy spending chunks of their time with complex software, they're a great choice. However, we think most people just want to get their data destroyed quickly – and with a guarantee that the data has actually been removed.

So that's how we built KillDisk.

And unlike some other complex wiping programs, we wanted KillDisk to be affordable to home and small business users. Wiping should be a straightforward process, and that's why we offer a no-frills free version if you just want to get it done as quickly as possible.

The professional version offers all sorts of extra features, including support for the seventeen most recognized security standards, data verification, and customizable certificates of disk wipe/erasure.

Data deletion should be exactly that – permanent removal of information, with no trace left behind. Active@ KillDisk makes sure that it is.

How to erase hard drive?

By James Moran
a small business owner in the GTA

How to Erase Hard Disk Data with Active@ KillDisk?

If you want to learn how to erase hard drive data thoroughly, then Active@ KillDisk is precisely the tool you need to get the job done. This software will permanently and securely wipe any sensitive data on a hard drive.

Computers have become an important and everyday feature of most people's lives. We use them for communication, work, entertainment and a whole lot more. Many people share sensitive information over the Internet or store personal data on their computers for a wide variety of reasons.

In fact, the average personal computer contains a lot of data that the owner probably wouldn't want anyone else to set eyes on, such as Internet banking details, passwords and other personal or financial information.

Because of this, it is essential to securely erase the contents of a drive before it ends up in someone else's hands such as if, for example, you are planning to sell or donate the computer. If you want to know how to erase hard disk data properly, then Active@ KillDisk has the solution.

When people either sell or donate their computer or hard drive, they often assume that simply formatting it or using the recovery CD which came with the machine is enough to permanently delete any personal data stored on it. Unfortunately, however this is not the case.

Data which is deleted simply by formatting and repartitioning the disk or emptying the Recycle Bin is simply not enough by itself. All this does is mark the space previously occupied by the data as free space. Indeed, other data can then overwrite it but until this eventually happens, the data is still recoverable using data recovery software. Fortunately, Active@ KillDisk can overcome this potential major security issue by showing you how to erase hard disk data properly.

Active@ KillDisk supports any type of hard drive regardless of which operating system it is running. In fact, it does not rely on the operating system installed at all, since it runs off its own bootable disk and is OS-independent entirely. It is a small but powerful utility which is easy to use thanks to its well-explained and intuitive features. No special knowledge or experience is required to use the software to its fullest, so there is no need for amateurs to worry either.

When you run hard disk eraser Active@ KillDisk, all data on the hard drive is permanently, completely deleted so that it is completely unrecoverable, regardless of which method anyone tries to use to recover the deleted data.

Active@ KillDisk securely overwrites the entire hard disk with zeros making data completely disappear. The process can take some time, especially on larger hard disks, but it takes advantage of the power of your available hardware to get the job done as quickly as possible without compromising on security. The software meets seventeen different IT security standards used in many countries all over the world so you can be sure of its effectiveness. Running the program is straightforward and all instructions are provided.

When you boot up from the CD you burn containing the software, it will present you with a table of all partitions and hard disks on your computer, including hidden ones. The software will then walk you through the rest of the process. Learn more at www.killdisk.com.

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