Press the Nuclear Button! (DriveErasePro - Total Privacy Protection)

Member Name: EasternStar

Product:	DriveErasePro - Total Privacy Protection
Date:	11/01/09 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gold-plated solution to destroy data. Wide range of deletion options.

Disadvantages: Over-long user guide. Too many choices. Gutmann method takes 6 hours!

It should all have been so simple. My ancient PC (a 2002 Compaq with no USB 2.0 ports, a roller-ball tracker mouse and a monitor the size and weight of a large rock) had finally given up the ghost. The computer's memory was full, had the clock speed of a lethargic snail and a svelte, high-performance Vista-powered laptop was primed and waiting to replace it. The only remaining hurdle, of course, was to wipe the memory of the existing machine prior to its disposal and recycling. Having conducted innumerable e-commerce and banking transactions online, I was keen to avoid any risk of identity theft. As I had no desire to smash the hard drive with a hammer - too much like hard work! - I was looking for a quick and simple solution to wipe the PC clean.

In the immortal words of Intel founder Andy Grove, "Only the paranoid survive". So a non-systematic, random walk search on Amazon led me to "Drive Erase Pro - Total Privacy Protection", with the promising tag-line, "Erase Sensitive Data from your Hard Drive Permanently!" This was priced at £27.99, significantly in excess of its competitors, so I was expecting a premium and effective product.

The package duly arrived, a rather large box that in the end contained just an instruction booklet and two CDs. One CD was packaged in white, was coloured blue and called "Drive Erase Privacy Protection", being an installer for the Drive Erase Pro application and another application called Surf Secret (which I wasn't interested in). The second CD looked like a nuclear detonation program, being packaged in bright red, coloured red itself and entitled - "Boot CD". It contained the cheerful warning "Using this disc will completely and permanently erase everything on your hard drive". Fantastic - abandon hope all ye who enter here! This was the magic bullet I had been looking for.

This was where the confusion began. I confess that I am neither a techie nor a geek and lacked the motivation and patience to read through the 87 page user guide from cover to cover. (As a plus point for me, this was all in English, so there was no need to wade through superfluous languages. This might equally cause problems for those whose first language is not technical English!)

What was the difference between the two CDs? This was unclear from a cursory reading of the manual. They seemed to do more or less the same thing, except that the blue disk allowed partitions (whatever these were) within Windows to be individually nuked, while the red disk was an "Apocalypse Now" scenario that would wipe the entire hard disk. There was also a confusing reference to building your own bootable media, which seemed superfluous as the red boot disk was clearly included with this version of the software.

More interestingly, there was a dummy's guide to the different types of data deletion, all of which options were provided by the CD. In ascending order of destructive power -

1. Fast Method: Performs a single pass on the partition or drive (good if you're passing the computer on to family and friends)

2. US DoD standard: Writes random symbols twice to each byte of each sector.

3. NAVSO P-5239-26: Uses four passes to delete the data

4. NAVSO P-5239-26 (MFM): Uses four passes, but in a slightly different manner to the above

5. VSITR: Uses seven passes

6. Russian: GOST P50739-95. Looks tough.

7. Bruce Schneier algorithm: takes seven passes at the data.

8. Peter Gutmann algorithm: "The Gutmann method uses thirty-five passes to securely erase the data. While this method is very secure, it is also the method that takes the longest time".

Wanting to get my money's worth, I decided on the nuclear option. Wikipedia said the Gutmann method is extremely stringent, although apparently intelligence agencies may have the ability to use magnetic force microscopes to reconstruct the original disk. Since my aim was merely to deter the casual identity thief, the Gutmann method seemed Gut enough for me (apologies for the pun). So after entering the code the process began.

Be warned. It takes hours, six to be precise. Still, I left my PC to run its self-destruct sequence and went shopping. And that was that. The PC was swiped 35 times, officially dead. Just a trip to the recycling centre remained to give my PC a decent send-off.

In summary, Drive Erase Pro is a fantastically effective product with a comprehensive user guide (even if it is confusing at times for the non-techie). However I could probably have saved time and money and purchased a less gold-plated solution.

(c) EasternStar 2009

Summary: Fantastically effective premium product. My PC will rest in peace.

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