In the past, we’ve shared several free utilities for Windows and Mac to wipe or delete data securely which includes all your confidential and private stuff. Big Angry Dog has released a new freeware ‘Hardwipe’ that allows users to permanently delete any desired contents from their hard drive to prevent the disposed data from being recovered ever.

Hardwipe is a 100% free program for Windows that offers various advanced features and options than just letting you securely wipe the data from your computer. It boasts a modern and easy-to-use interface, specially designed for Windows 7. With Hardwipe, one can wipe individual or multiple files, folders, an entire drive or partition. Additionally, it offers the ability to quickly Clean Free Drive Space to prevent anyone from recovering the old wiped data. It does so by overwriting the contents of previously deleted files. During Clean Space operation, the data presently stored on drive will not be wiped.

Hardwipe intelligently controls the disk writing speed for lengthy operations. When the ‘Speed Control’ is set to Automatic, it restricts disk writing considering the computer is being actively used, but increases it to maximum on being idle. You can always select "Full Speed" or "Restricted" from the main window to manually control the speed.

It integrates with Windows explorer that comes handy as you can quickly wipe files from right-click content menu. One can wipe a single file, multiple files or a folder simply by right-clicking. This is also possible for hard disk drives that can be wiped or cleaned.

Shell integration is disabled by default. To enable it, just open Hardwipe and go to Preferences > Options. Then select ‘Show Hardwipe Menus’ option and hit OK.

Key Features:

• Erases files by overwriting their contents prior to deletion.
• Integrates with Windows Explorer
• Supports major overwriting schemes, including: GOST P50739-95, DOD 5220.22-M, Schneier & Gutmann.
• Can even purge the Swapfile used by Windows (not available yet)
• Intelligent use of disk cache so that your computer remains responsive when cleaning entire drives
• Hardwipe can shutdown your computer automatically when finished 

Download Hardwipe  [Supports Windows 7, Vista, XP]

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Apple has just introduced a small app “Lion Recovery Disk Assistant” for Mac OS X Lion users that lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive. Although, OS X Lion has ‘Lion Recovery’ integrated by default but the Recovery HD partition exists on the boot disk, thus making it pretty difficult to repair or reinstall Lion in case the hard drive fails. (Assuming you don’t have a Installation DVD of Lion or a Bootable flash drive).

The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the built-in Lion Recovery: reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed.

Requirements:

• A Mac running OS X Lion with an existing Recovery HD
• An external USB hard drive or thumb drive with at least 1GB of free space

Note: The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will erase all data on the external drive when creating the Recovery HD. You should either backup your data before running the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, or create a new partition on the external drive.

To create Lion Recovery on an external drive, download Lion Recovery Disk Assistant application on your Mac. Insert a USB flash drive or external hard drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions. Check the below screenshots:

>> The new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot your Mac while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Start-up Manager. The external Recovery drive is represented by a orange color icon.

Notes:

• If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.

• If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Source: Apple

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‘EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition’ is an absolutely Free, powerful, and all-in-one Partition Manager software. I use it personally because it is very easy to use and a full-fledged partitioning tool for Windows. The program is mere 10 MB in size but comes packed with most useful features. The newest update v6.5.2 supports 64-bit OS and offers some special features, that makes it one of the best partition manager.

Main Benefits & New Features:

• New! FREE partition manager for Windows 32 bit & 64 bit HOME USERS. No Adware and Toolbar.
• New! Support removable devices like flash drives and memory cards.
• New! Convert primary partition to logical, convert logical partition to primary.
• New! Linux partition management: create, delete, format, recover EXT2/EXT3 partition, etc.
• New! Disk surface test to check and find bad sectors.
• Extend system partition to maximize computer performance.
• Partition Manager utility for better hard disk management and computer performance maximization.
• Disk & Partition Copy Wizard to copy partition or migrate entire hard disk to another without Windows system reinstallation.
• Partition Recovery Wizard to Recover deleted and lost partition.

Supported OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 (32-bit & 64-bit)

Download EASEUS Partition Master 6.5.2 Home Edition

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• Get EASEUS Partition Master Professional for Free !

Disk Drill is a new and free Mac Data Recovery Software, that recovers damaged and deleted data from external or internal hard drives, memory cards, etc and allows protecting data by using Recover Vault technology.

Disk Drill recovers data from HFS/HFS+, FAT, NTFS & other file systems right from your Mac. It helps you undelete Mac OS files using its 2 powerful Mac recovery methods: quick or deep scanning. It can recover photos, music, documents, applications and many other known formats.

Disk Drill is currently in beta version, which is totally free and not time-limited. 

Download Disk Drill  [Runs on Mac OS X 10.5 or later].

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I personally use EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition (Free) because it is easy to use, powerful and full-fledged partitioning tool for Windows. But you can now get “EASEUS Partition Master 6.1.1 Professional Edition” worth $39.95 absolutely Free, according to a giveaway led by Easeus. The Master Pro edition has many extra features and mainly has support for Windows 32 & 64-bit OS, Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008.

EASEUS Partition Master PRO Edition allows you to extend partition, especially for system drive, settle low disk space problem, manage disk space easily on MBR and GUID partition table (GPT) disk under Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 (both 32 bit and 64 bit). The most powerful hard disk management functions are brought together including: Partition Manager, Disk & Partition Copy Wizard and Partition Recovery Wizard. Moreover, you can create bootable CD/DVD in case of system boot failure.

Overview

• Extend system partition to maximize computer performance.
• Partition manager utility for better hard disk management and computer performance maximization.
• Copy Wizard to copy partition or migrate entire hard disk to another without Windows system reinstallation.
• Partition Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost partitions.
• Support GPT volumes – GPT disk partitioning, GPT disk copy, etc.
• Convert dynamic disk to basic disk easily with all data protected.

Download it for Free now from the Giveaway Page.

* The offer is for a limited time and ends on 22th Oct, 2010.

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HWM BlackBox is a Free and portable utility which provides precise details about the core components of your computer system to a great extent. It has a simple and clean GUI which shows in-depth hardware information such as of the Processor (CPU), Memory modules (RAM), Motherboard, Hard drives and Video card (Graphics).

There is a ‘Benchmark’ tool which is an ultimate way to test the Windows performance and every component of your system. Runs only on Vista and Windows 7.

It also has an “Overclocking Panel” which shows various parameters like Temperature, voltage, Speed and overclocking status of CPU, RAM, motherboard and graphics card.

HWM BlackBox supports a wide range of processors (CPUs), Chipset, Memory, Hard Drives, Graphic cards and graphical processors. There are other handful options like: export the full information to a file, add a gadget to desktop, 6 languages support, etc.

Supports: Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 [Both x86 and x64]

Download HWM BlackBox  [1.46 MB]

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Leading hard drive manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital (WD) offer a limited warranty of 5 or 3 years. By default, the warranty date is calculated from the manufacture date. It means a hard disk bought in January 2010 which is manufactured in August 2009, will have its warranty time calculated from Aug.

WD offers an easy way which allows users to update the warranty of their HDD online, thus to calculate it from the date of purchase. To do so, you need to have a proof of purchase, i.e. payment receipt or Bill.

If you feel that the warranty date needs to be updated from the purchase date, please carefully follow the instructions below:

1. Register online for a new account at WD or Login if you already have one. You will then receive an email with a confirmation link, click on the link to verify your email address and complete the registration process.

2. Visit this page and fill in all the required entries. Select your Product (Internal or External HDD), category as Warranty & Replacement and input hard drive serial no.

To find your WD hard drive serial no. download SIW and run it. Select the ‘Storage Devices’ option under Hardware. Locate the serial and model no. for your WD hard drive.

Note – Don’t enter the WD- part which is there at starting of serial number.

3. Enter “Update warranty” in the subject line under Question Data.

Attach a picture or a scanned copy of your purchase receipt (jpg, jpeg, or gif formats only, max 1.5 MB)

4. Click Continue, then you will receive an auto-response email from WD.

5. Wait for a day or two for WD staff to verify the information and update the warranty accordingly. You will then receive a response about the status of your email.

Check WD Hard Drive warranty status here.

I tried the above method and WD guys updated the warranty of my new hard drive from purchase date in just one day. Best part is, they updated my warranty for next 5yrs which actually was less than 3yrs. Related Posts:

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Do you want to backup all the data stored on your HDD to another internal/external hard drive or want to replace your older smaller hard disk with a new larger hard disk, without having to install the Operating System, applications and device drivers once again? Then check the tutorial below:

Using Disk Clone, you can create a exact copy of one Hard drive to another hard drive keeping all the partitions and data intact as they were in the original (source) disk. There are several applications to clone disk but I’ll discuss the one I just tried out.

EASEUS Todo Backup is free backup software that offers safe and efficient disk clone to transfer your data on the old disk to a new one and backup your system in case of computer crash or system failure. It’s very easy to use and can copy the entire data from one hard disk to another in just a few clicks and in short time.

Before proceeding, make sure:

• The new hard drive is attached and working. (See Disk drives under Device manager).
• You’re aware which disk is source and which is destination.
• The new (destination) hard drive does not contains any data because it’ll be wiped.
• The media used as destination should be of the same size as the source media or larger to ensure that all data will be copied.

Follow the step-by-step instructions below to clone disk:

1. Download and Install EASEUS Todo Backup (Freeware).

2. Launch the program and select the “Clone Disk” option.

3. Select the source hard disk and click ‘Next’ to continue.

4. Select the destination disk and click ‘Next’ to continue. (Destination disk is the place where all the data from source disk will be copied).

5. Review the source disk and the destination disk layout (partitions and unallocated space). Click ‘Next’ to continue.

6. The disk cloning process will now start. Wait for it to get successfully completed.

7. Click OK and you can then check both the disks in Disk Management.

Now you can connect the destination hard drive on any PC and use it instantly without installing Windows OS and other freaking software’s and drivers.

This guide comes handy when your hard drive goes Bad and is ready to fail. Just buy a new hard drive of same or big size and use the above tutorial to create a replicate of it.Related Posts:

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