Absolutely cracking hard disk app - FREE!

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Absolutely cracking hard disk app - FREE!

EDIT: Although it is free - there is a donate option.

TestDisk:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

I encourage people to download this and keep it safe as it could be an absolute life-saver in the future - certainly might save you days of faffing about like a headless maggot trying to play the drums with your head.

One of the great features is it can run in Windows - ie desktop.

Instructions are great - have a look at this example:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#Example_problem

Other examples:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Data_Recovery_Examples

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

TestDisk can

* Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
* Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
* Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
* Fix FAT tables
* Rebuild NTFS boot sector
* Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
* Fix MFT using MFT mirror
* Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock

Supported operating systems

TestDisk supports these operating systems:

* DOS: real or in a Windows 9x DOS box
* Microsoft Windows: NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista
* Linux
* FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
* SunOS
* Mac OS X

File systems

TestDisk can find lost partitions of these file systems:

* Be File System (BeOS)
* BSD disklabel (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD)
* Cramfs, Compressed File System
* DOS/Windows FAT 12, 16, and 32
* HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System
* JFS, IBM's Journaled File System
* Linux ext2 and ext3
* Linux RAID
o RAID 1: mirroring
o RAID 4: striped array with parity device
o RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
o RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
* Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
* LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
* Mac partition map
* Novell Storage Services (NSS)
* NTFS (Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008)
* ReiserFS 3.5, 3.6 and 4
* Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
* Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/...)
* XFS, SGI's Journaled File System

WERDNA

Puki, I know it was you.
Someone has been editing my posts.
Not much, just changing what I am the lord of.

I have changed my Password though, so have fun
trying to crack it.

Bwa ha ha ha ha

puki

What?

puki

Oh, I see changes have been made .

Wasn't me though.

I have a question for you - in your opinion, was your password easy for someone to guess? If not, ie it is totally obscure, then it suggests a wider problem.

WERDNA

My old password was just 'WERDNA',
I suppose it was easy to guess.
If it wasn't you, then who was it?
Someone must face my wrath!

The Mighty WERDNA()
;I'm leaving the parantheses blank to see if he
does it again.

Gabriel

You do realize that it could just have been a moderator editing your posts, in which case accessing your account or knowing your password would not have been necessary?

EDIT: BTW, whoever was doing it has a wicked sense of humour, I was loving it, although at the time I thought it was you :/

Happy Sammy

Hi all,

If I really want to completely erase the data on harddisk, does this kind of program exist?

Thanks in advance

Yan

Yes.

Happy Sammy

@Yan: What is the name of it?

Naughty Alien

#10

Werdna..i think Puki luv ya :)

Ross C

#11

A bit of a daft password isn't it?

Saying that, i was guilty of leaving my password for a site, at "password". I'm sure that's pretty close to the first words tried when force hacking an account.

Naughty Alien, i email ya back :o) Dunno if you got it.

Hujiklo

#12

My password is 'drowssap'.. he he, nobody will ever think of that.

EdzUp[SD]

#13

tbh having a password the same as your username is asking for trouble

Naughty Alien

#14

..hey Ross...I never receive any email otherwise i will reply :)...I think my gmail is recently sucker..I dunno why :)

D4NM4N

#15

->If I really want to completely erase the data on harddisk, does this kind of program exist

Use the "ultimate boot disk" its a great free set of tools. Theres a thingy on there that deletes your harddrive to american dept of defence standard.

Naughty Alien

#16

..dun worry..just put your drive in microwave :)

Yan

#17

@Happy Sammy - My facetious streak often gets the better of me...

http://www.howtowipeyourdrive.com/HowToWipeYourHardDrive.aspx

;o)

Happy Sammy

#18

@Yan and D4NM4N: Thanks a lot!

puki

#19

I must say though that anybody accessing ANY Blitzers account (for ANY reason of ill intent) and making changes is a pretty low.

People should be aware that although BRL don't show this, IPs are logged - and running through a proxy is not necessarily going to cover your tracks - especially when those people use the same IP elsewhere.

WERDNA

#20

I agree completly Puki,
although the comments that were made
with my account were funny, it was wrong.
And I apoligize for blaming you for doing it.
I'm sorry Puki.

The Apoligetic WERDNA(Lord of Forgivness)

JustLuke

#21

ANDREWERDNANDREW:

Paranoid and slightly dotty, eh? I like the cut of your jib, my young fellow. By the way, "Apologetic" is spelled, well, like that. Unless you meant to write "Apolaustic", in which case it isn't. But who isn't Apolaustic? I know I am.

Happy Sammy:

If you want to completely erase the data on a Hard Disk you should use a hammer. Or maybe a heavy boot of stamping. Having said that, I one jumped up and down on a BBC Model B Micro and it worked just fine afterwards, so maybe the former is a better method than the latter.

Puki:

Neat application. I've never been very good at backing up my data. It's one of those things that, when it crosses my mind, I always decide to do *tomorrow*. A decent data recovery application is bound to come in useful at some point.

BlitzSupport

#22

I've used TestDisk before, when my partitions all vanished. It's a really scary app, but if you choose what sounds most obvious it basically just works. Fixed my brother's lost partitions too. It's good stuff.

(Back online after 4 weeks without internet! Not as terrifying as it sounds.)