BCWipePD v.2
When you delete sensitive files from a disk on your computer, the operating system (for example, Windows or Linux) does not erase contents of these files from the disk - it only deletes 'references' on these files from filesystem tables. Contents of the deleted file (or file's body) continue to be stored on the disk and can be easily recovered using any disk tool utility.
Wiping is a term used to describe a process of shredding contents of a file or disk space. It is impossible to restore any data that has been properly wiped.
BCWipePD utility is designed for quite specific purposes, mainly for government agencies, banking and large corporations, where there is a need in a safe destroying contents of hard drives before computers are given out of the companies. BCWipePD is a powerful utility designed to provide a fast way for wiping disks on large number of computers without wasting time on installation the program on every computer separately.
Wiping a whole hard drive (or all hard drives) on the computer with BCWipePD is a simple procedure. You boot computer using BCWipePD bootable CD and confirm wiping. It is also possible to run BCWipePD with command-line parameters.
BCWipePD runs from bootable CD with kernel of Linux operating system. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Linux is distributed according to GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Source code of the Linux kernel version 2.6.12 used on the bootable CD are available for downloading from http://www.kernel.org . Text of GNU GPL is included into BCWipePD distributive.
BCWipePD features
The utility is able to destroy contents of whole hard drives, including partition tables, boot records, filesystem structures, operating system files and user files.
Wiping procedure can be run on any hardware platform with x386 and 64-bit AMD/Intel architecture, regardless of operating system installed on the computer.
BCWipePD can wipe all hard drives on the computer including the one where operating system is installed.
Contents of hard drives are wiped regardless of filesystem used to format the drives (FAT, NTFS, HPFS or other).
BCWipePD can wipe IDE, SATA, SCSI hard drives, removable disk devices (for example, USB hard drives, flash memory).
The utility allows the user to customize wiping scheme according to U.S. Department of Defense recommendations to destroy data (DoD 5200.28-STD) or according to Peter Gutmann 35-pass wiping scheme, or use your own customized wiping scheme.
BCWipePD is designed to provide a high performance of shredding data. On modern hard drives performance of 1-pass wiping can be 30-60 MBytes/sec and more. So 7-pass U.S. DoD wiping performance will be 4-8 MBytes/sec.
BCWipePD can wipe several hard drives in parallel. The functionality significantly increases an overall performance of simultaneous wiping hard drives, especially if they are connected to different controllers on motherboard.
BCWipePD recognizes and can wipe Host Protected Area (HPA) on hard drives.
BCWipePD defines number of sectors hidden by Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) functionality appeared since ATA-6 standard. BCWipePD allows wiping the DCO hidden sectors.
Using BCWipePD
BCWipePD is distributed as a self-extracted installation program that can be run on computer with Windows operating system.
BCWipePD includes ISO Configuration Wizard program for preparing ISO image of bootable CD with BCWipePD wiping utility.
BCWipePD ISO Configuration Wizard program runs on computers with Windows operating system. The program helps to create bootable CD used to wipe hard drives according to your requirements.
BCWipePD bootable CD allows booting computer with x386 hardware platform with any operating system earlier installed on the computer. BCWipePD wiping functions can be run automatically or manually on the computer.
Known problems
Computer freezes after "Uncompressing Linux..." message. Linux kernel conflicts with ACPI on some hardware configurations. Please try to disable ACPI in BIOS, then boot with BCWipePD CD again.
Changelog
- 19-November-2008 | v.2.06.1
- Now the program correctly recognizes HP/Compaq SmartArray controllers.
- Last pass data verification added according to US DoD 5220-22M standard.
- 14-July-2008 | v.2.05
- Information about Host Protected Area (HPA) and Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) is reported properly for SATA drives.
- 10-August-2007 | v.2.04
- Occasional problem in recognizing SATA drives resolved.
- 30-September-2005 | v.2.02
- BCWipePD now supports wiping removable disk devices (for example, USB hard drives, flash memory).
- 22-September-2005 | v.2.01
- BCWipePD v.2 announced.