User manual ACRONIS POWER UTILITIES

[. . . ] Acronis PowerUtilities User's Guide Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000-2004 Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000-2004. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. [. . . ] Trace Windows data and files are cleaned with the help of integrated data destruction algorithms. Acronis PrivacyExpert provides the user with eight algorithms. 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. As a result previously written data is replaced by newer random data. For more information on the algorithms see Appendix A. «Hard Disk Wiping Algorithms». 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. clean Internet history and last visited pages list. 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. For example, you can clean just the Last Visited Pages or cookies. A separate component is cleaned faster than a complex PC clean-up. Separate component clean-up is performed from Internet Components and System Components sections (see 3. 1. 2 «Cleaning Separate System Components»). [. . . ] These differences are irrelevant for the controller. 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. Writing to magnetic media leads to subtle effects summarized as follows: every track of a magnetic disk stores an image of every record ever written to it, but the effect of such record (magnetic layer) becomes more subtle as time passes. A. 1 Information Wiping Algorithms Functioning Principles Physically the complete wiping of information from a hard disk involves the switching of every elementary magnetic area of the recording material as many times as possible by writing specially selected sequences of logical 1 and 0 (also known as samples). [. . . ]