Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 April 30

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April 30

Hard drive to oblivion

I've just gotten rid of an old PC (an AT!). What's the proper procedure for making the hard drive unreadable? Where do I apply the hammer? Clarityfiend 00:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The best way would be to run an eraser program on the HDD. Physical means may not be guaranteed. Splintercellguy 00:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, I think the opposite, bang the platters with a hammer to be sure, eraser programs may not be guaranteed;).. if you take the drive apart, which shouldn't be hard if you have the right screw driver head, often a torx, getting to the platters is easy, give them a few good bangs and there is no way anyone is going to read anything off it. There was a data recovery company that would actually SHOOT the platters with a gun claiming that anything that leaves the platters intact risks the possibility of some data being recovered, no matter what else has been done to it. Vespine 01:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

If Clarityfiend's hard drive is of interest to any three-letter agencies, I would not rely on shooting it, as some tracks could still be read. There's only one way to be sure, so better safe than sorry. :) --TotoBaggins 01:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Only one way to be sure? Surely you meant to post a link on how to nuke it from orbit. In all seriousness, take a random huge file (video, huge text, etc), drag it around various folders on a drive for awhile, delete everything on the drive, drag it around some more, run a disk wiping utility, remove the hard drive, disassemble it, run a powerful magnet over the platters, grind/smash them up, dispose of the various pieces in random locations away from your house. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 09:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Dragging files into different folders won't do anything -- it usually just changes a symbolic link, not the physical location of bytes on the disk. A disk wiping utility is much more efficient, i.e. can do all sorts of unpleasant things up to DOD standards (first writing different patterns of 1s and 0s and random noise and etc.) --140.247.248.175 21:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Not that interesting yet, but I've still got time bwahahahaha. So I have to disassemble the thing. Rats, I was hoping that bashing it a few times would be enough. Clarityfiend 02:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Did somebody call my name ? Seriously, you would have to have some extremely valuable info on the computer for somebody to try to read off a damaged hard drive. If you think the CIA is that interested in you, perhaps you should invest in a nice aluminum foil hat. :-) StuRat 02:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Using something like DBAN would erase the drive, and it is almost certain that the FBI/CIA/NSA/DEA/FCC/whatever won't be able to recover it if you do it enough. But if you feel the need too let out some steam, go and bang ahead! --Oskar 03:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Degaussing takes definitive final care of any magnetic storage medium. A hammer may be cheaper, but it lacks the style. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.187.41.149 (talk) 03:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

Bruce Schneier's wonderful book Applied Cryptography begins with a quotation along the lines of, "there are two types of cryptography in the world: the kind that can keep your secrets safe from your kid sister, and the kind that can keep them safe from major world governments; this book is about the latter". If you're like me, your life concerns are closer to the former, and so a whack with a hammer will do the trick. As for aluminum foil hats, that's just what they want you to think. --TotoBaggins 03:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think beating it with a hammer will work. You can still get the platter out, flatten them, and read data from it. I think it would be best to melt it, or otherwise do sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/[your harddrive] a few times would also be fine. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I used to use dd like that but then I discovered that shred(1) is part of the GNU Core Utilities, it is much quicker. -- Diletante 14:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Shred doesn't work on most modern filesystems. Unless you're using ext2, don't count on it to do anything useful. -- mattb 15:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant to use it on the drive device, not a file in a filesystem. You shouldn't expect any overwrite utility to be able to wipe files from any modern filesystem, even dd if=/dev/random of=file. Shred is functionally equivelent to using dd in such a way, just faster. -- Diletante 15:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Degausser. 08:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the CIA/FBI protocol for destroying sensitive data is to wipe the hard drive hundreds of times, crush the drive until it is in grain size pieces and then turn it into cement. If I were you I'd wipe the drive a few times then open it up and look around inside for the main disk contraption

it looks like this

and then hit that with a hamer and destroy it. --Lwarf 10:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Throw it in the fireplace. See curie point and Incineration. --Russoc4 12:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this question has begged the question: How do you not destroy your hard drive? x42bn6 Talk 14:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You could always retain the hard-drive as a second hard-drive in your (presumably) new computer. Whilst perhaps slower and a bit smaller than others it could always serve as a useful place to back-up important files. This way you don't have to worry about 'erasing' it. I think you just need to switch it to 'slave' and then connect it into a spare place within your PC (I forget, it's been so long!). Of course if you are intent on destroying it why not get your car-crushed with it inside? Sure it means you lose your car but it's gotta work... ny156uk 17:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Everyone always thinks this is a joke, but I'm serious (and I believe it would work). I work in a hospital with two MRIs that are used almost constantly. I've repeatedly asked if it would be possible to mount a solid box next to the MRI that we can put harddrives in. After a couple days getting wiped by the MRI, I believe that the drives will completely erased. Other than a safety issue, I simply don't see what the problem with this plan is. It is a lot cheaper than purchasing a $10,000 industrial drive eraser. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

WOH! wait a minuit! why are you lot all talking about eraser programs and stuff like that? exactly how is a hard drive readable after youve attacked it with a hammer?

Computer forensics? In any case, the irony here is that when you approach it from this point of view you have a hard time coming up with ways to totally delete data, but when it's the "shit, I didn't save my Word document" situation it's impossible to get it back. So, in short, the answer is clearly: 1. suddenly require to have all data on the drive be preserved before a big deadline, 2. just wait as natural bad luck will somehow make it totally impossible to get data off of the drive. Actually, pushing this further, the very fact that the FBI guy would want the data would probably doom the drive from the beginning. ;-) --140.247.248.175 21:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Erase the drive 99 times, then put in next to the mri for a week. Then open the drive, grind the platters into dust. Next, take the dust and make a concrete block out of it. Then take the block and go at it with a sledge hammer. Final, take the peaces and ship them to Greenland. (don't forget to where your foil hat while you are doing it :) --68.154.107.171 15:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

If its a windows formatted drive (FAT/NTFS) create an ext3 journalled filesystem on it and then fill it with data and empty it again. ext3 is a b*stard for recovering data from when you haven't done anything drastic. Once done, cover it in petrol (or gasoline as some of you may call it) and set it on fire, keep it going for a while though. Phillip.upson 16:35, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

How can I convert a avi divx file to wmv?

How can I convert a avi divx file to wmv? I have tied several "zune" software programs which are specifically designed to convert these files and none have worked. I have also hacked the zune registry keys to allow the importing and conversion of these files by Zune and they don't convert. I have also tried the media encoder microsoft makes as well as windows movie maker. None of them are working. Can someone please help me out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.169.106.72 (talk) 06:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

With out any more specific information, all I can suggest is VirtualDub to try to transcode your divx files to wmv files. Since you mentioned the Zune and hacking of registry keys, the only thing other I can think of is there's some sort of DRM locking you out. —Mitaphane _?|! 23:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Why modify the zune to support other formats !support more formats on zune

--Nerdd 21:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Geforce 8800GTS, DirectX 10.

Will the Geforce 8800 see a price drop anytime soon? Also: will DirectX 10 ever be supported on Windows XP? Down M. 08:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe (ATI's competing GPUs may be coming out in May, which could force a drop), and probably no (Microsoft needs some way to get people to switch, and they have some technical excuses as well). However, a newer revision of OpenGL codenamed Mt Evans will be implementing many of the new features that DX10 has. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 08:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Reinstalling OSX

Well, I put an old Panther OSX disc in in the hope of being able to reinstall over the previous owner's crap, the CD is, naturally, slot loading, which means that if I shut it off, and turn it back on, it boots right to the CD, which means it's kinda not doing anything for me. I try to proceed, and I get nothing but a blue folder flashing the two mac face logo and a ?, is it actually doing anything? Because that seems like more of an error message to me =/ And if it is, what the heck can I do about it? It seems to only give me options between trying to boot it and shutting it off. The terminal doesn't recognize unmount, and says that "help on is off.", so i'm kinda stuck here.-- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 09:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58465 worked, with a bit of effort. I dunno know if I want to reinstall OSX, or linux... linux would probably be more actually useful, plus it would clean the computer, but OSX was the entire reason I bought this... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Feba (talk • contribs) 10:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

You could dual boot and see which you like better. --TotoBaggins 13:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you have an Intel-based Mac or a PowerPC? It makes a big difference in your ability to run either/both. And I don't think Linux will "clean the computer" any more than clearing the harddrive and reinstalling over it. --24.147.86.187 13:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

AutoHotkey for linux

Is there something like that program for Linux systems? If possible, using the same scripting language. --Taraborn 12:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Digital TV signal encoding

This BBC article features a diagram of a digital signal, with a label stating "High peaks represent 1 in binary, while low peaks represents [sic] 0". This sounds like Non-return-to-zero, but do digital television signals actually use this method, or do they use Non-return-to-zero, inverted or something else? — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

What the BBC describes in that article seems to be direct binary encoding. It's such a high level description that I don't think they'd bother confusing the issue by introducing NRZ/NRZI to the lay man. I have no idea what signalling methods various DTV standards use. The bottom of the HDTV article talks a little about encoding and modulation. -- mattb 13:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The digital television signal is converted to analog using modulation. QPSK or 16-QAM or 64-QAM is used to vary the phase and possibly amplitude of a carrier wave to convey information. DVB-T is the standard used for this. If you look at the articles you can see there is much more to it than the BBC article. GB 01:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Need help with Linux

I need help setting up a Broadcom Bcmxx wireless card in openSUSE 10.2 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.158.149.51 (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

Here are a couple of pages on how to post requests for technical assistance in a way that's likely to get you a good answer: [1], [2] --TotoBaggins 15:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

GIF Animation

I'd like to know what image editing program is best for making simple GIF animations, particularily one which allows one to import or create images (and convert the image format if necassary), change the frame rate of the animation (this is the most important aspect for me), change the frame rotation direction, and make it loop indefinitely. Adobe Photoshop sounds good to me, though I don't know if it has all of these features. If somone could enlighten me as to that it would nice. What I currently use to make animations is Game Maker 6, which I create the animations on and then import them to Microsoft GIF Animator to make them loop indefinitely (something Game Maker is not capable of apparantly). Though this process provides me with most of the options I listed, I can find no way to change the frame rate of the animations (which seems stuck at about 14 fps when exported to the web or any other application). Is it even possible to change the frame rate, or is it a set standard for all GIF images? BeefJeaunt 18:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You don't set a frame rate for GIF animations per se; rather, you set the time each individual image in the animation is displayed for (so frame 1 could be 1/10 of a second, frame 2 could be 5 seconds etc), although some applications probably allow you to change the display time of every frame in the animation, which will effectively set the frame rate. I use ImageReady (part of Photoshop) for assembling GIF animations. I used to use GIF Construction Set back in the day. There are myriad more applications for assembling animations - a hunt round download.com should throw up some stuff, but I'm sure other people here will have suggestions. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Google Earth

Hello,

How do you add 'Google Earth Community' things (the blue Is) onto G.E. for everyone to see? (I have a G.E. community account)

thanks, 81.77.8.49 19:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

ClarisWorks and Microsoft Works

If Microsoft Works was developed after ClarisWorks and both programs have similar functions, did Microsoft Corporation take the "Works" suffix from ClarisWorks and apply it to their brand name? Thanks very much for your response. --Mayfare 19:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"Works" is a common appellation for the low-end version of a software product. Appleworks was one, released two years before MS Works. In startup.com, venture capitalists nix the "GovWorks" name for the protagonist's product because "-works" means "low-end". --TotoBaggins 01:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Sidenote: From what I've read about software copyright law especially in the USA is that you can make a program with the same functions as a nother program and even a very similar layout - and it is not considered copyright infringement. If it was, Microsoft would probably have been shut down a long time ago. Rfwoolf 15:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Movie maker and google video

hello,

is there any way to convert videos downloaded from google video into a format accepted by microsoft movie maker? can you download the videos in a different format?

thanks, --81.77.8.49 20:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

If you use VideoDownloader for Firefox you can usually download Google Video videos as AVI, which ought to work? --140.247.248.175 21:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You can check out zamzarthere is nothing to pay for or download--Nerdd 23:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Largest USB Flash Drive

What is the largest USB Flash Drive? -68.193.147.179 20:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like the biggest one you can get on the market is 64GB. That is if you can afford its insane price of $4800. —Mitaphane _?|! 22:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You asked this question two days ago. Please look at the existing results instead of posting again. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 05:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

To the original poster's defense, the answered reply gave a non-USB Flash drive drive, not a USB flash drive as the answer. While based on same method storage, they are 2 different things. —Mitaphane _?|! 23:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

flash drive usb

If I use a Live USB, will it make my computer run faster? 68.193.147.179 20:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi If your using Windows Vista then yes you can thanks to ReadyBoost which you can activate in the following manner how to speed up vista with a flash drive

hope this helps --Nerdd 23:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

If you mean live cd distro on a USB flash drive, then I don't think so. Flash drives are slower then internal hard disks so you won't see an improvement in performance, I think portability and redundency are the main advantages of a live distro, not speed. Vespine 02:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It's worth noting that flash drives are only slower because they are not hard wired to the system, but instead rely on USB to transfer data. They are in theory much faster than magnetic hard drives because they contain no moving parts. --Russoc4 16:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Is that really true? And if it is true, are you talking about latency, bandwidth, or both? --Tardis 21:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Meh, I am not a hundred percent sure on this issue, but I believe that modern hard disks can edge out most flash MSCs in linear read/write operations (as opposed to random operations). You might be surprised how fast some parts can move and how slow hot electron injection can be. -- mattb 21:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)