User manual ACRONIS POWER UTILITIES

[. . . ] Acronis PowerUtilities User's Guide Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000-2004 Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000-2004. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. [. . . ] Five of the eight meet the most popular national data destruction standards: (1) American: DoD 5220. 22-M, (2) American: NAVSO P-5239-26 (RLL), 22 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer (3) American: NAVSO P-5239-26 (MFM), (4) German: VSITR, (5) Russian: Russian Standard, GOST P50739-95. Besides algorithms that meet national standards, Acronis PrivacyExpert provides two far more powerful pre-defined algorithms offered by top information security specialists: (6) Peter Gutmann's algorithm; (7) Bruce Schneier's algorithm. After using the most powerful clean-up algorithms of Acronis PrivacyExpert the disk data can in no way be recovered by any modern methods including the most powerful magnetic microscopy!The user is also provided with a simple, but fast algorithm to use in less important situations: (8) Fast. The algorithm operation is based on multiple rewriting of hard disk sectors containing user data with chains of logical 0 and 1. There you will also find information on the number of hard disk passes, provided by each algorithm, and numeric chains written in the process (see A. 2 «Algorithms Used by Acronis PrivacyExpert and »). 3. 8 Complex PC Clean-up Using variants of complex PC clean-up described below, you can clean a large number of various Windows components that keep evidence of your PC activity. 3. 8. 1 Entire PC Clean-up If you need to clean a PC of any evidence of your activity, select the Entire PC clean-up. Executing it, you'll be able to clean all Windows components accessible by Acronis PrivacyExpert: 1. clean Windows registry from user activity evidence; delete temporary files from standard Windows folders; delete any file types from user folders on any disks connected to the PC; clean Windows Recycle Bin; clean Windows swap file; clean hard disk free space; Acronis PowerUtilities 23 7. 9. clean the last visited pages and last used documents list; delete the evidence of searching for files on connected disks, for networked computers, for information on the Internet; clean Internet cache; 10. Entire PC clean-up is executed by a mouse-click on its name in the right part of the main window (for other execution methods see sections 3. 2, 3. 5). 3. 8. 2 System Clean-up If you need to wipe the evidence of your PC activity from its system sections, use the System clean-up. clean Windows registry from user activity traces; delete temporary files from standard Windows folders; delete any file types from user folders on any disks connected to a PC; clean Windows Recycle Bin; clean Windows swap file; clean hard disk free space; clean last used documents list; delete the evidence of searching for files on connected disks, for networked computers, for information on the Internet. System cleanup can be executed by mouse-clicking the cleanup variant in the right part of the main window (for other execution methods see sections 3. 2, 3. 5). 3. 8. 3 Internet Clean-up If you need to wipe the evidence of your Internet activity, use Internet cleanup. clean-up Internet cache; delete cookies; delete downloaded components; clean Internet history and last visited pages list. Internet clean-up can be executed by mouse-clicking its name in the right part of the main window (for other execution methods see sections 3. 2, 3. 5). 24 Chapter 3 : Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer 3. 9 A Fast Cleanup of Separate System Components Acronis PrivacyExpert enables you to perform a fast clean-up of separate system components. Separate component clean-up is performed from Internet Components and System Components sections (see 3. 1. 2 «Cleaning Separate System Components»). Setting up and executing the clean-up is similar to complex clean-up set-up and execution. Please note that the detailed description of Acronis PrivacyExpert actions for each specific component clean-up case (how and what files and folders, system or registry sections are cleaned from what data types) are included in the . pdf file on the installation CD-ROM. Acronis PowerUtilities 25 Chapter 4. Migrating Data to a New Hard Disk You can migrate your data from the old hard disk to a new one with the help of Acronis MigrateEasy, a part or the Acronis PowerUtilities suite. 4. 1 Preparing for Migration To use the Acronis MigrateEasy application effectively you have to know at least the basics of hard disks and how the computer works with them. Below we will provide only the most necessary information, without covering the technical details of inner structure of hard disks. If you have difficulties with understanding what the application does to hard disks, please refer to Appendices at the end of this Guide. Those appendices contain both information on hard disk organization and on how data are stored on it. At the end of the Guide you will find a Glossary with explanations of terms from this Guide that may be unknown or unclear to you. 4. 2 Hard Disk Partitions and File Systems. It would be quite inconvenient if you could only access the entire hard disk, so a mechanism was created that allows you to divide the hard disk into several parts for storing different types data or operating systems. An operating system provides the user with ability to work with data by supporting some type of file system on a partition. [. . . ] Generally speaking, a 1 written to a hard disk is read as 1 by its controller, and 0 is read as 0. However, of you write 1 over 0, the result is conditionally 0. 95 and vice versa ­ if 1 is written over 1 the result is 1. 05. However using special equipment, one can easily read the «underlying» sequence of 1 and 0. It only requires specialized software and inexpensive hardware to read data «deleted» this way by analyzing magnetization of hard disk sectors, residual magnetization of tracksides and/or by using current magnetic microscopes. [. . . ]