When you delete a a photo, word document, excel document etc, by default the file is placed in your recycle bin. You then empty the recycle bin and the data is permanently removed, or is it??
When you empty your recycle bin the operating system does not really remove the file from the disk but only removes the reference of the file from the file system table. The file will remain on the disk until another file is created over it, but even after that it might be possible to recover data by studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface.
There are lots of tools available on the net free and paid which allow you to overwrite your deleted data multiple times so their inaccessible.
One of the tools out there is Eraser, a free tool which can be downloaded from here
I found this tool easy to use and did a good job
Eraser Features
1) It works with Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
2) Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 can still be used with version 5.7
3) It works with any drive that works with Windows
4) Secure drive erasure methods are supported out of the box
5) Erases files, folders and their previously deleted counterparts
6) Works with an extremely customisable Scheduler
I have seen lots of environments where administrators have setup several start menu or desktop redirected folders for different departments with an organisation.
For example:
Sage Payroll should only be available for the Payroll department, so therefore a redirected start menu folder is setup for the payroll department. Another redirected start menu folder may be setup for the I.T department and so on. At the end you may have several redirected start menu and desktop folders which can look messy and become difficult to manage.
Microsoft do have a tool available which will make your life much easier and allow you to use one start menu or desktop folder for all users. You can make shortcuts available to users depending on what security groups they are part of. So you have one redirected start menu folder for all users but only make apps available which they need to use, and this is all controlled by Security Groups.
The tool is Share and Storage Management which is part of Windows Server 2008 and replaces File Server Management tool in Windows Server 2003.
To add the feature to a Windows 2008 server:
1. Start the Server Manager
2. Click Roles
3. Click Add Roles
4. Select File Services and click the Next button
5. Select File Server Resource Manager
6. Decide which volumes you would like to monitor and configure the rest as required
7. When done, the File Server Resource Manager and the Share and Storage Management tools are installed
To configure the feature
1. Access Share and Storage Management tools via programs, administrative tools
2. Right click on the share, for example startmenu if you have one
3. Click Properties
4. Click the advanced button
5. Click ‘Enable Access-Based enumeration’ and click OK
6. Click the permissions tab and setup share permissions and NTFS permission as required. If its for a redirected start or desktop folder, you may want to allow users
read only access.
7. Click OK when done
8. Now access your redirected start menu folder where ever it is setup, right click on a shortcut, for example Sage Payroll and add the Sage Security Group to the security tab. The result is, the Sage Payroll application shortcut
will only be visible to users within the Sage Security Group.
Save the below script to a text file, amend the domain or ip you wish to ping and save as a .bat file. For example ping.bat
Open a command prompt and drop the ping.bat file into the command prompt and press enter.
The script will run and save output to c:\pingtest.txt
@Echo off
:TOP
echo %time% >> “C:\pingtest.txt”
Ping www.domainname.co.uk >> “C:\pingtest.txt”
GOTO TOP
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