shellylh

Why would writing over the drive twice work if writing over it once didn't? Just curious. I think I made him encrypt the drive when he first got it. If this is true, I assume it would be difficult for someone to recover the data (well, except his password is pretty easy for a computer to guess probably - would it help for me to change his main password?).

By the way, can anyone explain why encryption doesn't work. If encryption does keep people from getting to your information, why do it? I would think it would be as good as reforming the HD.

Yeah but I don't think it is that easy to get to the hard drive in the MBP.

It would be much better for a random person to try to reconstruct the data because he has letters of recommendation for students who are current grad studetns, postdocs and former students (these are exactly the people who are going to have access to the computer). While it is unlikely they would do this, graduate students in math have been known to spend endless hours doing something just because they can (and some have backgrounds in computer science).

I realized that I have to erase the hard drive on Tim's most recent computer (2014 MBP) which has a SSD drive. The problem is that I have to give the laptop back to the department and I believe they are going to use the laptop. I think it needs to include the SSD and even if not, I am not sure how easy it is to get the SSD out of the computer. Is there a way to securely erase an SSD without physically destroying it? I have read that encrypting doesn't work nor does writing over with zeros.

Finished Catastrophe Season 1 - it was pretty funny.

I had already checked the BIOS settings and it didn't have USB as an option like the other tablet. I just put the older harddrive in the newer tablet pc and did it that way, they weren't very hard to get to.

Is Jeni's back in business again?

Barf.

Thanks Jacob and Mark. Ran into an annoying problem: my older 2005 tablet pc won't boot from a USB drive and doesn't have CD drive. That is annoying. Guess I'll switch the HDs in the two of them and use the newer computer to wipe it.

How do you write all 1s to the drive?

This is not really the right thread but I thought some people here would know the answer. I am erasing the drives of some old (2005 and 2008) Windows tablet pcs so that I can recycle them. I am using a live usb boot of linux to erase the hard drive. I first tried sudo wipe /dev/sda but that said it was going to take 4 weeks and 1 day, not a good solution. Then I tried sudo wipe -q -Q 1 /dev/sda and that was still going to take over 19 hours. So I am thinking just writing over it with zeros using dd. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda Will that be secure enough? Perhaps I can run it 2-3 times. I could also use random data (but maybe that will take too long) sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda Any better options?

Happy birthday Todd!!!

OK I didn't know that. I guess Firefox is not? That may explain why my mom always has a bunch of shit Malware on her Mac whenever I see her. I forced her to start using Chrome so that is probably a good start. I guess I actually want to use a VM, not a sanboxed browser. It seems a bit more secure.

I sometimes find myself searching website that may have malware, etc (not porn, for example, I was just searching about viruses because of a problem with my dad's computer). Given the increasing amount of malware out there, I thought it might be useful to be browsing in a virtual machine. Is parallels still good or is there something better out there. For a related question, is there a way to sandbox a single browser?

Yeah, it was pretty easy to find once I knew about it.

Yeah, it was pretty easy to find once I knew about it.

I haven't paid attention to the news today. Guess I missed something.

Yeah, it is a 32-bit. I don't think he will mind though. He doesn't use it for much. I'm guessing he would not have a good time with the drivers. I wish I were still there to do this. I am wondering if he would just let me buy he a new desktop (I tried this Christmas and he said no). This seems decent and Dell doesn't put bloatware on the computer. http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3647-small-desktop/pd?oc=fdcwst315bw10&model_id=inspiron-3647-small-desktop Unfortunately, it does come with Windows 10 (which he probably won't like since he probably won't be able to run Microsoft Office 2000 on). Now that I think about it, I doubt Windows 8.1 is compatible with Office 2000.

He doesn't have any of the original disks (since it was my brother's computer - who passed away). Shouldn't the OEM disk work by itself (even though he will have to build from scratch)? The computer came with a bunch of shit installed so it would be better not to have all that stuff. I'm not so worried about the corrupted user profile. I am just concerned about the malicious code in the file that keeps popping up when running AVG.

No phone number to call, it just looks like a windows popup (I guess I was stupid to press ok but I did) and F-Secure in the title of the Window (if you know what I mean). I guess I posted this in the wrong place (in the Windows software thread where I was asking for AV software). copied from other thread: "Look what I found at home. (see other post for picture) One of them is the disks that I bought to upgrade to Windows 7, the other is an OEM I bought at Amazon. Will my dad* be able to use either too do a clean install? Which would be better to try? Only the " upgrade" includes a 64bit version. If feel more comfortable sending these rather than something that was downloaded from a torrent site (even if legal). *Or someone who knew what they were doing?" I was going to send these disks in the mail to my dad today. It would be too frustrating for him to download the software and make a DVD for installation himself. I assume that the OEM version should work with a clean install. (The upgrade disk probably won't work if the disk is wiped I am guessing.) Is this correct?

It wasn't quarantined. There were no threats at all. When I ran it (AVG) a second time, it came up with the same problem. F-Secure is another anti-virus program. My dad says that he has never seen it on the computer (although some part may be left from when my brother had the computer).

Catastrophe season 1 episode 1

I approve of all of this.