Detto.com
 |
WipeDrive PROthe complete disk sanitizing solution for IT Professionals |
WipeDrive PRO
Download the WipeDrive User Guide.Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view this guide.
Tutorials
- Learn how to Wipe Your Drives with WipeDrive
- Step-by-Step Instructions to Reinstall Windows
- How to Get into the System BIOS
- How to Do a Custom Overwrite with WipeDrive
- How to Use Command Line Parameters
Frequently Asked Questions
| 1. | I have rebooted with the WipeDrive disk but WipeDrive did not start. What should I do?
You may need to use a WipeDrive bootable diskette or change your computer's startup sequence. Click here for detailed instructions. |
||||
| 2. | How do I repartition and reformat my drive after using WipeDrive?
See how to reinstall Windows. |
||||
| 3. | How do I upgrade WipeDrive to the latest version?
The latest version of WipeDrive Pro is v4.1.2. Click here to request an upgrade. |
||||
| 4. | How do I make a WipeDrive boot diskette?
If you have a WipeDrive boot CD, place the CD into a computer running Windows and then from within Windows, choose Start, then Run from the Windows taskbar. Type D:makedisk where D is your CD-ROM drive letter. Then press OK. Insert a blank diskette into the A: drive when prompted. |
||||
| 5. | How long does it take WipeDrive PRO to wipe a drive?
The time it takes to wipe a drive is limited to the speed of the hardware and not the software. Each sector on the drive must be overwritten to ensure that the data has been erased. Older drives will take much longer to wipe than newer drives. The following benchmarks were performed on a Pentium III system. Newer drives can expect an increase in speed.
|
||||
| 6. | Can I wipe a drive from within Windows?
WipeDrive cannot wipe a drive while Windows is running. You must run WipeDrive from a DOS boot disk. There is one exception. In Windows 98 you can erase any drive attached to the computer except for the drive containing Windows. |
||||
| 7. | Does WipeDrive work with SCSI drives?
Yes. Most SCSI drives can be accessed by your computer's BIOS. If you have more than one SCSI drive and your BIOS only detects the first drive, you will need to do one of two things. You can attach and wipe each drive individually or you can find DOS drivers for your particular machine. Those drivers can be found at your hardware manufacturer's web site. |
||||
| 8. | Can I place WipeDrive in a batch file and have it overwrite all drives
without any user confirmations?
There is no option to turn off user confirmations because of the liability risk. If there were an option to do so, the WipeDrive boot disk could be used as a malicious tool. |
||||
| 9. | I wiped my drive but WipeDrive reported errors (or dirty sectors).
What does this mean?
If WipeDrive reports errors during a wipe or dirty sectors during a verification, it probably means that your drive is encountering some problems. This generally means your drive is beginning to fail. If you encounter errors or dirty sectors, we recommend rebooting the computer and trying to wipe it again. If you still encounter errors or dirty sectors, you can still use your drive, but we highly recommend backing up the data on it often as the drive could fail at any time. |
||||
| 10. | Will WipeDrive work with Flash cards and USB drives?
WipeDrive will only wipe physical hard drives. See the MediaWiper page for details about how to wipe your USB and memory cards. |
||||
| 11. | Will WipeDrive get rid of viruses? What about a BIOS virus?
Wipedrive cleans every sector of your hard disk. Any data on the drive, including viruses, will be completely erased. However, there are other places viruses can be stored. One such place is the System BIOS. Viruses can remain here after the computer has been shut down and even after the hard drive has been wiped. Most System BIOS have an option to "Restore Factory Defaults." Usage of this option will restore the original settings of the BIOS and at the same time wipe it of any viruses if they exist. |
||||
| 12. | Why doesn't my keyboard work in WipeDrive? I can't enter the main menu options.
You are most likely you are using a USB keyboard. A USB keyboard's plug is rectangular in shape. Since WipeDrive runs outside of Windows, the driver for your USB keyboard may not be loaded. If you have this problem, you have two options:
|
||||
| 13. | I am using a German keyboard. I ran WipeDrive and selected to wipe the drive. After pressing Y to continue, the program aborted the operation. What when wrong?
WipeDrive is not running in Windows and may interpret the keyboard differently based on international hardware setup. For example, pressing the character "z" on the German keyboard is actually the "Y" US key equivalent. |
||||
| 14. | I have wiped a drive using the DoD level 3 wipe and then used OnTrack's Recovery program to verify the drive using the RAW format option. The program reported that it found recoverable files. Why is that?
The problem lies in what is called a false positive due to random data. Random data is written to the drive on the third overwrite of the DoD level 3 wipe. This is what causes false positives in OnTrack's program. When OnTrack's program searches a drive in RAW format, it tries to find lost files on the drive. To do this, it will look at the beginning of each sector and try to match the first few bytes of a sector with the first few bytes of a known file type. For example, the zip file header is only a few bytes in length and if OnTrack's program finds those values, it will call that sector part of a recoverable zip file, even though it may not be. Since the data on the drive is random and since it is being searched in RAW format, OnTrack's program will find false positives all over the drive. This means the chance of there being random bytes on the drive that match a simple file header is quite large, as billions of byte combinations were written to the drive. Therefore, using OnTrack's program to verify a wipe will be a very difficult task because of the way it interprets data. It was not built to verify random byte combinations. WipeDrive does have a built in verify option that can verify a DoD wipe. It also has a sector viewer that allows you to manually look at sectors if you need to. In summary, using a program like OnTrack's Recovery to verify any DoD wipe from any wiping program will always produce false positives due to the random data. |
||||
| 15. | After choosing option 1 from the main WipeDrive menu, the computer screen flickers and turns colors. What should I do?
There is an incompatibility between WipeDrive and the computer's BIOS.
|
||||
| 16. | How do I know what number to use when prompted to enter a number from 0 to 255 to specify a character to be used while wiping?
The number from 0 to 255 specifies a character from the ASCII table. Click here for a list of available characters. |
Testimonial
"WipeDrive may be the easiest and best file deletion software to reliably delete all of the information on the hard drive of a Windows-based computer. WipeDrive provides a safe way around a serious privacy hazard that arises when companies dispose of old computers""
– Ben Ling
(Utah Business Magazine)
View Cart