Hard disks are very much sensitive so a data loss can happen anytime! Most of  it a hardware failure can cause such disaster! I have seen many instances that a portable hard drive gets crash very easily. A simple reason is that the way uses it, if you throw or keep it in a bad temperature it can seriously hurt the hard drive and it will affect the working of the major parts like Spindle, Platter and the head. If such thing happens you might hear some noises from the hard drive. For a common person if he hear such noises it will be hard to identify and understand that his hard disk is about to die soon. So probably he will ignore and that can lead to data loss then an expensive data recovery process.

So the people at Datacent (A professional Data Recovery team) has created a page on their website and uploaded various sounds of hard disk spinning problems.

You will find media files for almost all the hard disks available in the market such as Samsung, Maxtor, IBM/Hitachi, Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Quantum.

So next time when you hear such noises from the hard drive take a complete backup of your data before the hard drive perish!

Image Courtesy gary j wood

I am sure this will be the best simple and easy to use partition manager which you have ever heard. EASEUS Partition Master is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 also Windows Server 2000, 2003, 20008 both 32 and 64 but editions.

Similar to any other partition tool it can be used as a Partition manager, Disk & partition Copy Wizard and Partition Recovery Wizard on MBR and GUID partition table.  Apart from these basic features it will allow you to Resize/Move Partition, Extend System Drive, Copy Disk & Partition, Merge Partition, Split Partition, Redistribute Free Space, Convert Dynamic Disk, and Partition Recovery.

” Let me share with you a real scenario were this tool helped to extend the Operating system partition without formatting or deleting anything from the hard drive. It was a notebook with two 40GB each size, were only one drive was used and it was occupying the majority of that drive space and it almost failed in terms of performance. But the second drive was unused, so using the Resize feature in EASEUS Partition Master the task was very easy to allocate a certain amount of space from the second drive to the first drive. “

This tool can be used in following situations.

1. When the primary partition needs to be extended in case if the secondary partition is available (This will require when the primary partition is running out of space)
2. When you want to decrease the space in a partition.
3. When you want to create a secondary partition from an available free space in the primary partition. (Most of the pre-installed notebook will have only one drive, were this tool can be used to create another partition)

Try this detailed tutorial on how to perform this task.

Download it

Disk Space Fan will let you visualize your entire hard disk data in an easy understandable manner and thus you can find how much space is occupied by each folder. This freeware is very useful when you are in a situation were your hard disk is almost full with some junk data that you are not aware of it. The visualized chart (They have used Ringschart to create the chart here) will display the data on the drive in a very nice way. When you navigate to each folder you a preview any files on the built-in windows explorer shell and also an image can be previewed.

It runs on Windows XP with SP2 or higher, Vista and Windows 7. The Disk Space Fan Pro can provide you some advanced features such a network file scanning and finding the duplicated files on the network with an easy deletion method.

The interface has created in a very nice style with easy and self explanatory features.

Download free version now!

“A recent CBS News broadcast raised the issue of security of hard drive data in digital multifunction products. Konica Minolta would like to assure you that we are a leader in the area of MFP security. Our MFPs can ensure documents that are copied, scanned, faxed or otherwise transmitted do not remain stored on the hard drive or in DRAM memory as a standard feature.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc6L_K04ex0&feature[/youtube]

There are Data security kits available from the manufacturer as a optional hardware upgrade. Those kits provide these extra security.

* Encrypts all data prior to being stored in DRAM
* Encrypts all data stored on the hard drive
* DRAM is cleared after copy, scan, and print use
* Runs automatically without user initiation
* Provides overwriting routines to make deleted data irretrievable

Most of the clients are not aware of these upgrades, it is really important that the manufacturer or supplier should make aware all their clients that there are such kits available.

Best practices for securing MFPs Via ITToolbox

* Meet industry certification: When deciding what brand and model to lease or buy, make sure the device meets industry security standards. Two prominent certifications are ISO 15408 Level 3 Certification and IEEE-2600-2008.
* Ease-of-use versus security: Company management must decide what access controls to use if any. Access controls typically consist of user authentication, account codes, and password protection.
* Data security kits: As mentioned in the CBS News video, MFP distributors need to inform customers about data security packages and their importance. If there are any security concerns, using a data security kit will address them.
* End-of-Life considerations: When buying or signing a lease for MFPs, determine what should happen to the hard drive at end-of-life. Typical options are; destroy the hard drive, keep it on-site, or have the MFP distributor scrub the hard drive using an approved process.

]]> http://www.hackstacks.com/hack-your-multi-function-copier/347/feed 0 http://www.hackstacks.com/how-to-get-rid-of-cdfs-partition-from-your-flash-drive/337 http://www.hackstacks.com/how-to-get-rid-of-cdfs-partition-from-your-flash-drive/337#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:13:27 +0000 Renjith http://www.hackstacks.com/?p=337 more »]]>

I was googling to get a solution for how to delete CDFS partition from my Flash drive. It is so annoying when a program autoruns whenever you plug-in your flash drive and instead of the regular driver letter for flash drive one more drive will show up in My Computer. I have tried formatting and used windows disc manager, Fdisk.. It was all in vain! I have seen this CDFS partition in many of the flash drives which is supplied by a product manufacturer. The CDFS partition will actually contain the device driver in those Flash drives. When you buy a Sandisk Cruzer Flash they are providing you a program called U3 which is actually a useful application has capabilities for Drive security, Antivirus, Supports synchronization between your PC and Flash Drive etc, but remember they have used the CDFS technology to bind these application in to the flash drive.

Believe me am not going to tell you how to create a CDFS partition in your Flash drive but let me show you how to delete it.

1.    Download the U3 Removal tool from Sandisk
2.    Before you start the application plug your flash drive
3.    Run the application and you will be prompted like below

4.    Click Next to proceed.

5.    Select Yes and Click on Format

After formatting if you open My Computer it will no longer display the CDFS partition.

GPT drives make use of the GUID partition table (GPT) disk partitioning system. Main advantage of this partitioning system is, it supports up to 128 primary partitions and will allow you to create more than 2TB sized disk volumes. Were in the MBR system supports only up to 4 primary partitions and has a volume limit of 2TB. GPT is extremely suitable for a 64 bit operating system.

In a 32 bit windows operating system the GPT disk will not display in my computer but if you go to the disk management it will display the partition there but you will not be to format or delete. Now lets see how to covert MBR to GPT or vice versa.

* Before you follow this procedure make sure you backup the data from the hard drive in order to avoid the data loss.

• Type in “DiskPart” in command line.
• Type in “list disk” in command line to show all disks in this machine.
• Use “select” to set the focus to the specified partition, for example “select disk 1″.
• Use “clean” command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.
• Go back to Disk Management and Select the “Unallocated” disk and make as Logical Drive ( Which will make the drive in MBR)

When you need to convert a MBR drive to GPT partition you will require to format the drive and delete it to make it as an un partitioned space. Then right click on the un partitioned drive from Disk management window will give you option to “Convert to GPT Disk”.