Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
The recent post,“Is it possible to retrieve data from an HDD that’s been zeroed out?” generated some interesting mail arguing the technical merits of single vs. multipass, and random vs nonrandom, overwrites. For example, Miles Wolbe sent in this excellent note: Hi Fred, This is a topic that has interested me for some time: Is…
Easily! In Win10 on a standard PC, it takes about a minute: Type hibernate into the Cortana/Search box; select Power & sleep when it’s offered. When Power & sleep opens, click Additional power settings. A new Window will open. On the left side of the new window, click Choose what the power buttons do. Click…
It depends on what level of snooping you want to guard against. But in all cases, it’s smart to start by reformatting and data-wiping any kind of drive/memory that you’re discarding. So, that’s the first step. Next, you can deter casual snoops simply by destroying the physical USB package: Use pliers to break off the…
This week’s new AskWoody Plus newsletter is being emailed and posted; and (for now) you can read it for free. LANGALIST: Win10’s 18-month ‘service life‘ complicates updates WINDOWS 10: Create an MS Family to share your computing resources BEST OF THE LOUNGE: Microsoft quietly adds new telemetry to Win7 patch PATCH WATCH: July updates come with a few warts BEST…
With the end of this year’s stint as a herring migration monitor (numbers yet to come), I had a free morning this week. It was summerlike, so I slathered on the sunblock and pedaled to Deer Island, in Boston harbor. Part of the Harborwalk rings the island. I hadn’t been there in a year, but…
Depends on what kind of changes you mean; and on variables such as which OS you’re using. For example, if you pre-vacation shutdown included a pending update to a new version of Windows (perhaps without you realizing it), the update would complete when you next turned on the PC — even if that was after…
If the product is well-designed, it will be built to withstand normal shipping temperatures while off: Think of a cargo container full of PCs baking for days in the sun on the deck of a ship transiting the tropics; or deep-chilling for hours in an airliner’s cargo hold; etc. That doesn’t meant your laptop is…
(Answer requested by Shane Zimmerman) Actually, yes! (And I’m not talking about recovering a long, useless string of zeros!) Zeroing (or One-ing) out a drive — filling it with all Zeros or all Ones — will make it unrecoverable to consumer gear, but maybe not to specialized equipment. Here’s why: A One laid on top…
This week’s new AskWoody Plus newsletter is being emailed and posted; and (for now) you can read it for free: LANGALIST: How do you know if File History is really working? Plus: Full and partial fixes to a recurring and seemingly patternless boot failure. BEST OF THE LOUNGE: Windows 10 cumulative update failed BEST UTILITIES: Freeware Spotlight — CipherShed Previous…
Probably not. The Windows license process generates a unique numeric ID or “score” for your PC’s specific hardware configuration and copy of Windows. Microsoft knows that PCs get upgraded, so the system is flexible enough to allow the score to change, some, without triggering a need to re-license. For example, you usually can upgrade your…