BenChase

Anyone used that 18.2GB 15000 rpm drive out yet? I was thinking about striping like 4 of those babies....any word on their performance?

I cursed another one of these morons out tonight!! Into the hellfire with them!

One more thing.... I have mine set to "none". If there is a crash, I really don't care. I just reboot. If its that bad, I re-install the operating system and restore my backups.

1 - If you are running a simple home system or network, then I would suggest setting it to the kernel or 64K mark to preserve space. You are really going to be doing no good keeping it at 256MB, if you don't plan on sending that 256MB to Microsoft tech support for analysis upon having a crash. You will not hurt your system by changing this setting. All you are affecting is how much is RAM is being dumped to disk for analysis following a crash. 2 - Normal Home/Power User: kernel or 64k, Big Business Server operator: 256MB, extremely paranoid home user that likes to read hex: 256MB. 3 - Nothing. (Its the data that was in RAM at the time of the crash) 4 - The file is data that was in RAM at the time of the crash. Sure you can browse the content, most of it is not very exciting. 5 - Sort of. The page file is used for paging parts of RAM to disk. In reality..if you have a LOT of ram (1GB and above), you don't really NEED a page file...I'm sure there are some that will argue this.. Hope this helps. -Ben

Quote: Or, since you prolly have been thinkin' of clearing out the old anyways... Do a complete format of both C and D Smack'em together (dont use more than 6Gb tops for running any MS based OS (I'm using 4GB for XP) partition the drive into a 4-6GB boot partition and use the remainder to have D: for fun and games and storage, and and... I'm curious as to why you would say not to use more than a 6gb partition for running a MS OS. Most everyone I work with uses 10+ GB partitions for running everything from 98, to 2000 advanced server, to XP. If you're talking about using a smaller partition to keep defrag times short and such, then this would make sense in that aspect. However, if you're talking about security, it's far better to have your important data on another physical drive, assuming you can afford it. If there is a technical concern by using more than 6GB for a boot partition, please let me know, I'd love to hear about it. - Ben Chase, MCSE

That's hilarious!!!

All of the SCSI drives I use in our raid arrays at work are Seagate...they are awesome.. Don't know about IBM.. I always by Seagate when it comes to SCSI HDs.

I have the exact same monitor that you do...but I have a voodoo3 3500 card.. My maximum rate is 100HZ all the time...that's weird... Hmm.. Anyone know how to fix this?

If the vendor says they will not make any drivers, you have two things to resort to: 1 - Try using Win2k/NT drivers to see if they work. 2 - Write your own drivers, or find someone that may already have! Unfortunately, some vendors choose not to support new platforms, and that leaves us in the position that you're in. Screwed. Sorry to hear about this bud, but if they say they aren't making drivers, it's either time to go back to your old operating system, or get some new hardware (recommended). - Ben

I use pricewatch extensively It's a good site I'm just looking for your recommendations on certain MB's and etc...

The reason that I would know is because most of the software that is used for certain things is standard throughout most agencies of the government. Discussion of such things on the board is not of a concerning nature due to the availiability of the information. It's not classified. For example, Kane's security toolbox is used in every agency of the government. I was suprised, because I had not yet heard of the program when I have dealt with members of that agency and others concerning information security...and that's all I'll say about that

Hi Folks, what I'm looking for is your suggestions would be for me on the following hardware, as I'm buying a new system. I have a badass Visionmaster pro 19 inch monitor, but I just need a CPU. My budget $800 What I want: A good motherboard that will do IDE raid (is it worth it?) A decent video card(not the best) A Badass sound card Enough Ram to run .Net advanced server A case with a poopload of good fans 300 Watt PS Basic fast CD-ROM, no burner 2-3 of the fastest IDE drives available totaling 40-80 gigs(for a Raid 0 config) Pentium IV 1.5ghz I've been out of touch with the lastest hardware out there..and I'd appreciate the help! Thanks a lot!

I'd be happy to review your document for you. I recently finished drafting and finalizing what is known in the DOD as a Systems Security Authorization Agreement (SSAA). It ended up being close to 160 pages. Keep in mind, it took me 6 months to write it..lol. Not something one does overnight. I have a variety of duties, that's just one of them. As for degaussing, yes...using a high powered magnet, you are guaranteed to permanently get rid of anything that was there...forever, guaranteed. However, one drawback to this, is that it will most likely make the disk unusable. I thought I'd be smart one time with this old 80mb hard drive, so I degaussed it.. well...it appeared that I had also wiped the firmware chip on the drive as well. I tossed it. As for running the hardware recovery test after using your software, I could probably estimate that between 70-85% of the data may be recovered if you employ the methods that you spoke of earlier. Even the expensive hardware recovery method doesn't get 100%. To get access for you to perform this test would be difficult considering the costs involved. The only ones I have access to are DISA and NSA..and they only do it for classified information. I don't have very much of a programming background..I only have very basic knowledge of C++ and VBasic (I only have gotten to the class structure stuff), I haven't messed with the WIN32 API or anything of that nature..Probably won't unless I'm forced to. - Ben

Alecstarr: You make a very good point about overwriting the filename to erase ALL traces of the files existance. However, a filename by itself could never be used as evidence, unless there was some incriminating data along with it. You are correct in your assessment of the filename situation. As for the program you speak of, the reason that I know for a fact that data can still be recovered is because to actually make the data literally "go away" for good, you have to degauss it. Here is the explaination: When a hard drive (or any other drive for that matter) writes information to the disk, it does so at a certain skew angle that is preset by the manufacturer (normally to maximize storage space). This skew angle is not normally able to be changed without specialized tools, such as opening the drive up and physically changing the skew, or by the use of the firmware built into the drive. Software can not physically change the skew angle at which the drive is writing data. "It is possible to open the drive in RAW mode, access either the FAT or MFT$ file (yes, this is possible) and reconstruct the directory/file tree yourself. Finding any files 'marked deleted' and list them as candidates for recovery. By renaming their first character, you can recover the file & it is recommended to do so to another disk as well. Provided the interior data is not scrambled up, you can get it back whole many times. Again, It has proven successful against many programs that do file recovery, and I'd wager it'd do well against even hardware based data recovery methods." - Yes, you are correct about this. This is an advanced method employed by many popular data recovery labs. In most cases, data can be recovered this way. What I am speaking about is hardware modification involving changing the skew angle of the read/write head. By changing the skew angle, data recovery experts, spe[censored]ts, (FBI, NSA), can recover data that has "spilled over" from the original skew angle, into another close angle. This is known as data shadowing. In this case, any kind of overwriting will make no difference. However, very few people have to worry about this technique as it costs more than any law enforcment agency would spend to prosecute you. Unless of course you're involved in some very serious activity. - My advice: If you have sensitive files, encrypt them..preferably with a scheme that is computationally hard (meaning that it would take longer than the age of the universe to decrypt using brute-force on the most powerful known computer). Do NOT use DES..the ability to EASILY crack that (less than a 24 hours on dedicated hardware) has existed for some time. I would suggest using IDEA, it's a rock-solid encryption scheme. Do not allow sensitive unencrypted data to be copied even once to your hard drive. Encrypt it, then copy it if possible. If you're interested in the study and history of encryption, you should check out the book: "Applied Cryptography". It's steep reading for most. Hope you like math! - Ben

USB is the way to go....ps/2 is legacy and will soon go the way of the DODO.