User manual ONTRACK DATAERASER PROFESSIONAL V2

DataEraserTM Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Explanation of Operation and Use Users Manual Table of Contents 1. Brief Overview 2. Hardware/System Requirements 3. Distinctions between Personal and Professional Versions 4. Verification of data overwriting 5. DataEraser startup and operating procedures Screenshots - All screens are the same between versions except as noted Page 2 Page 3 Page 3 Page 4 Page 4 Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Load ASPI drivers (Professional version only) Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 25 Page 27 Welcome screen Main menu (Provides an overview of the DataEraser steps) Drive selection Individual partition or full drive selection Overwrite options (Professional version only) Select number of passes (Professional version only) Final overwrite pattern Verification selection (Professional version only) Validation Certificate comment entry (Professional version only) Final confirmation of overwrite options Overwriting Verifying Successful Overwrite Completion Validation Certificate (Professional version only) View Drives menu selection View Drive/Disk Look opening screen Disk Look screen with a typical example of data on a drive Disk Look screen after DataEraser overwrite with 00 pattern Exit dataEraser menu selection 6. Professional version database methods 7. Errors and known limitations 8. SCSI Issues 1 Return to Table of contents 1. Brief Overview Most computer users have come to realize that data saved to a hard drive is left on the drive after deleting or sending the data to the Recycle bin. Deletion only means that the operating system no longer has access to the data, not that the actual information has been removed. The closest analogy is likened to removing the specific entry in the table of contents of a book without going out to the chapter area to rip out the associated pages. All operating systems currently employ this timesaving method of deletion. DataEraser is designed to eliminate data from any portion of a hard drive, since it can completely overwrite the entire drive. Options to erase (overwrite) a single partition, or all areas of a hard drive are provided as choices in a simple menu system. DataEraser writes predetermined character patterns (the final pattern is a selection choice in some cases) to the surface of the hard drive. When a pattern (any character or combination of characters) is written to a data area, any previous information is lost so far as any operating system can access. If the full drive option is chosen, all data in normal file areas, hidden files, or protected areas will be erased. Previous installations that failed, viruses and other troublesome situations may be cleared. The obvious danger inherent is that no keyboard level data recovery process can retrieve the data once DataEraser has been run on that area. Ontrack recommends creating a backup before using DataEraser if there is any concern for accessing that data again. The following are typical uses for DataEraser: · · · · · Drive or system recycling from one user or company to another (especially good in leased situations) Donations or other transfers of hard drives, including warranty replacement Eliminating unwanted email or other data from a system. Purging all data for a known clean re-installation In some cases DataEraser can be valuable to "start from scratch" when completely reinstalling an operating system or attempting to clean up a virus. One issue of eliminating sensitive data on a system has to do with the duplication of data to another partition or another hard drive as a background process. Many programs rely on temporary directories, especially on the first hard drive to store data while an application program edits or handles that data. Remember that these sorts of possibilities exist beyond the drive where the data is ultimately stored. It may be necessary to overwrite more than just the storage drive to eliminate deleted temporary file remnants on other drives in the computer system. 2 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents 2. Hardware/System Requirements DataEraser requires: · · · · · AT compatible CPU chipsets with a minimum of 386 or greater processor 8 Mb of RAM 1.44 Mb floppy diskette drive EGA 640 x 480 or above graphics Hard drives must be SCSI or IDE technology (EIDE/Fast-ATA) drives attached in common controller methods. No guarantees of drive access are made with proprietary IDE controller cards. 3. Distinctions between Personal and Professional Versions DataEraser is available in a Personal or Professional version. Product Features Ability to overwrite IDE/ATA drives Ability to overwrite SCSI drives Graphical user interface Time remaining and grow bar displayed Self-booting capability for use on all Intel PCs - and all operating systems Ability to overwrite entire drive no matter what BIOS limitations exist Option to overwrite one or more partitions or the entire drive Logs bad sectors encountered during overwrite Automatically includes drive model and serial number in reports View Drive application allows viewing drive sectors before or after overwrite Full Verification option verifies the complete drive Quick Verification option verifies 1% of the drive Creates validation certificate if Full Verification option is used Creates a database of overwritten drives to import into Microsoft Access Three pass overwrite meets U.S. Department of Defense specifications Seven pass overwrite meets German standards User-defined option to overwrite from 1 to 99 times Professional Personal 3 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents 4. Verification of data overwriting Since, in many cases, data elimination is an important part of personal or company security, a verification process is incorporated in DataEraser. The user has a choice of Full or Quick verification. The Full Verification choice reads every sector, while Quick Verification spot-checks 1% of the overwritten area. Disk Look, (View Drives menu selection) an absolute sector viewer, is an additional utility provided for viewing sectors on the hard drive. Any sector on the hard drive may be viewed to verify no data exists on the drive. For those cases where manual spot-checking is desired, this utility may offer visual verification of any area. The following files will be created after erasing and verifying a drive: REPORT.TXT DE_CERT.TXT (Professional version only) DE_DATA.TXT (Professional version only) 5. DataEraser startup and operating procedures Do not remove the DataEraser diskette while the tests are running. Information from the diskette is used throughout the testing process. Shut down Windows. Insert the DataEraser diskette in the A: drive and reboot or power on the computer. The Caldera DR-DOS Operating System starts up. If the system fails to boot from the diskette, see Errors and known limitations section later in this file. 4 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 1: Load ASPI drivers (Professional version only) If the system contains SCSI hard drives, in order to access the drives the ASPI drivers need to be loaded. During boot up a LoadASPI program will present 3 options: 1) Skip loading an ASPI driver 2) Use a known ASPI device driver - offers the option to enter the location (path) and name of an ASPI driver. 3) Autodetect for a host adapter - the program will detect what type of ASPI driver is required and automatically load it. If there are no SCSI devices on the system, either skip loading an ASPI driver or let the program default to auto-detect. 5 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 2: Welcome screen 6 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 3: Main menu (Provides an overview of the DataEraser steps) The DataEraser Overview dialog on the right side displays the steps. The menu provides the following options: · Run DataEraser · View Drives · View README File · View License Agreement · Exit DataEraser 7 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 4: Drive selection Please be careful in selecting the appropriate hard drive on this screen. There will be a display just before erasing data that provides a description of all selections made. Normally all drives are displayed one this screen. See Errors and known limitations section later in this manual if not all hard drives are shown. 8 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 5: Individual partition or full drive selection Select the specific partition to overwrite or the Entire Drive and press enter. If a partition was chosen to overwrite, DataEraser will return to this menu until all the partitions or the entire drive has been overwritten. Professional Version note: A Validation Certificate will be created only if the entire drive is overwritten using the Full Verification option. 9 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 6: Overwrite options (Professional version only) Select the type of overwrite to run. There are four to select from: 1) Single pass 2) Triple pass - U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) specification 3) Seven pass - German standard 4) Multiple pass - Configurable up to 99 overwrite passes 10 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 7: Select number of passes (Professional version only) This screen will appear if the Multiple pass option was selected on the previous screen. The default is 99 passes. To change the number of passes, simply backspace then type the number of passes to run. 11 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 8: Final overwrite pattern Enter the hex pattern to be used on the final overwrite pass or press Enter to use the default '00'. Valid hexadecimal characters include 0 through 9 and A through F and DataEraser will overwrite using any combination of two hexadecimal characters. 12 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 9: Verification selection (Professional version only) If the overwrite entire drive options was chosen, select the type of verification to use. Choose from Full verification which reads and verifies the entire drive; Quick verification which randomly verifies approximately 1% of the drive; or choose No verification. NOTE: A Validation Certificate will only be created if Full verification is selected. 13 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 10: Validation Certificate comment entry (Professional version only) If Full verification was chosen any comments to be included in the Validation Certificate may be entered. The information from each Validation Certificate is written to a comma-delimited database file, DE_DATA.TXT, which can be imported to a database for easy tracking of erased drives. An MS Access 97 template is provided with the Professional Version. Instructions on how to import the data into the template are included in the IMPORT.HLP file. 14 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 11: Final confirmation of overwrite options Before the overwrite and verification is completed, a review screen is presented to verify the options chosen. Tab or arrow to [Y]es to continue or [N]o to return to the main menu. The default setting is No, therefore the overwriting process cannot be started accidentally. The overwrite and verification are performed without interruption. To cancel the overwrite at any time press ESC. When the overwrite and verification are completed, a dialog box will display the results. If any read/write errors were detected on the drive, they are reported in the report.txt file on the diskette. See Errors and known limitations section on how to view this file. Professional version only: If the verification was successful, a Validation Certificate is written to the diskette and will be displayed following the results dialog box. 15 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 12: Overwriting While the overwrite is taking place, the time remaining for the current pass is displayed in an hours, minutes, seconds (00:00:00) format. The overwrite progress can also be observed by monitoring the growbar. 16 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 13: Verifying While the verification is taking place, the time remaining for the current pass is displayed in an hours, minutes, seconds (00:00:00) format. The verification progress can also be observed by monitoring the growbar. 17 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 14: Successful Overwrite Completion If any errors were encountered during the overwrite or the verification process, they will be written to the REPORT.TXT file on the diskette. This file will provide further details of each specific error, including the sector location where an error occurred. 18 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 15: Validation Certificate (Professional version only) This is a sample of the Validation Certificate. Any comment entered on the Validation Certificate comment entry screen will appear in the Comment Information. In the example above, Joe's Desktop is the comment. 19 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc. Return to Table of contents Figure 16: View Drives menu selection Upon returning to the main menu after an overwrite, the View Drives option is automatically highlighted. Press Enter to view the drive on a sector level for visual verification of the overwrite. 20 Copyright © 2000 ONTRACK Data International, Inc.