binaryslate

I try to regularly clean up my machine, and it’s just a pain to clear the whitespace securely. The Windows File Shredder provides a nice helpful utility to dispose of unwanted files securely.

It’s a simple windows batch file you can leave on your desktop, a simple drag and drop of a file onto the script will dispose of it once and for all.

It uses the SDelete utility from Sysinternals (plenty of other great apps there too).


@echo off
echo .* * *W A R N I N G * * *
echo .
echo .The File(s)/Folders(s) Will Be Permanently Deleted!
echo .
echo .Press CTRL-C to Abort and Terminate Batch Job Or...
echo .
pause
sdelete -p 4 -s %1
pause


Save the file as “shred.bat” on your desktop right next to your Recycling Bin. Now just drag and drop those sensitive files onto the icon to make them disappear forever!

tip: lifehacker

A very valuable and useful read over at extremetech - Fixing Windows with Knoppix.

Bootable distros have been very handy in the past for getting access to broken windows boxes to recover data. The guide is quite informative about getting on to ntfs partitions, always a tricky problem in the past, and still a bit flaky today with no full proof driver.

A good one to keep handy. I always have a bootable disto in the car just incase of emergencies at the co-location !

Literally there’s not ! On my Axim x50v keyboard, or rather in WM2003 and probably other versions too, the pop-up keyboard has no escape key… So imagine how suprised I was the other day whilst using pocketputty (it’s a must btw) and vi and finding I couldn’t get out of insert mode !!

The simple solution for any of those who get stuck like I did. Use the mapped escape key…

CTRL + [

Hurrah !

Yeah I know it’s two taps and vi is all about swiftness, but we are taking about using vi via windows… Can’t have everything