System State

[bigrich0086]

im not sure if anyone knows about this but at my school the computer tech guys had me installing these little black boxes with wires that i wired into the systems hard drive n such and o nthe other end was a key hole to lock it and un lock it. when locked any data saved to that hard drive form any user will be deleted once the computer is restarted and set back to orginal state. if unlocked files are allowed to be written to hard drive. if u can help me is there software out there that does the same thing because they woudlnt tell me where to find those thigs i was wiring in.

 

[PC eye]

First you may want a Welcome to the Computer Forum here! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html and the usual reminder given to all new members about the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

What was done there was a rapid "zero fill(writing binary zeros to the drive)" by electronic not software means. For wiping data from the drive there are various methods like a simple deletion of the existing partition on the drive if not simply reformatting the existing one. Other drive erasers can be found for repeatedly zero filling the drive for a more effective data removal. But there are also data recovery tools that can be used to retrieve binary bots of information left on the drive unless totally cleaned.

For totally erasing a drive there are retail softwares like Active ERASER seen at http://www.active-eraser.com/ intended for just that reason to see that all personal data is removed. Tools like this are good when going to sell a used system you own.

 

[terii]

You may want to look at Deepfreeze. It takes a snapshot of your operating system, data etc and when frozen everything you do is transparent. This means that when you restart the computer any changes that were made, any data that was added etc is now gone. It can be dangerous for home users as you will eventually lose data. I use this in a classroom setting where data is not a problem. Works wonders when you are trying to chase problems that a student generated on a computer. Simply reboot it.

Google for deepfreeze and see if it meets your needs.

 

[PC eye]

The old dos way was to simply use a zero filler loaded from a boot floppy that seemingly "took foreverrrrrrrrr..." in those days. It depends on how thorough you have to be. Like I mentioned earlier if you are planning to sell your current system or just the drive alone you want something that will perform a total wipe like seeing a repeated zero fiil off the drive.

For simply cleaning a drive for another copy of the same OS or different one, or to clean a virus off then removing the current partition(s) will work. Are you looking for a freeware or retail product? Softwares won't quite effect the magnetic field of the drive's platters however if that's what you are looking for. It sounds like they used direct dc for that there.