Sidebar: If Your Hard Drive Could Testify ...
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The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect the hard drive of every laptop that enters the country in the same way it looks through suitcases.
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underpar writes &quot;According to this ZDNet.com article, Microsoft &#39;has launched a pilot program in which some visitors to the main Windows download page are being asked to let the software maker check to see whether their copy of the operating system is
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SEATTLE - Now that digital cameras have overtaken film cameras in sales, users are beginning to encounter a familiar problem -- what to do with the bulging image files and folders filling up computer hard drives?
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Tycho:  It's floating around now, out there on the Wub, and it calls to you.  Or maybe it does, I don't actually know.  In any case, it can be got from 3D Downloads, the Fileplanets, GamersHell, or WorthDownloading.  Download it from mulltiple sites simultaneously for a naughty thrill.  God only knows how this would run on my Vista rig at home, but it's a Vista rig, so you can probably guess.  (CW)TB
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Windows? Linux? Mac OS? One day it won't matter.
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Google's Desktop Search application indexes a PC hard drive when it's not being used
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(InfoWorld) - Hard drives full of confidential data are still turning up on the second-hand market, researchers have reported. Investigations carried out on behalf of BT by the University of Glamorgan in the U.K., Edith Cowan University in Australia, and Longwood University in the U.S., found that 37 percent of drives surveyed had traces of personal data on them. Damningly, this figure is much the same as it was for the same surveys undertaken by the universities in each of the last two years, suggesting that either companies are ignoring the issue or simply lack the tools to adequately wipe data before resale. Sensitive information retrieved included salary details, financial data of specific companies, credit card numbers, medical data, visa applications, details of online purchases, and inevitably, online pornography. The sample totalled 350 hard drives acquired in online auctions. "Given the level of exposure that the subjects of security and identity theft has received in recent times, and the availability of suitable tools to ensure the safe disposal of information, it is difficult to understand why disks are still not being effectively cleaned before they are disposed off," said BT's security research head, Dr Andy Jones. "When organizations dispose off surplus and obsolete computers and hard disks, they must ensure that adequate procedures are in place to destroy any data and also to check that the procedures that are in place are effective -- whether they are handled by internal resources or through a third party contractor," he said. The full report -- which has yet to be made publically available -- reveals that buying second-hand disks is an unreliable way to get hold of storage. Of the 133 disks bought in the U.K., 44 percent of them didn't even work. But of those that did, 19 percent had enough information on them to identify the organization from which they had come, 65 percent had enough data to identify named people, and 17 percent contained "illicit" data. Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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A new data-protection device will safeguard your passwords and files against theft. The IronKey (available at ThinkGeek.com) is a USB stick with a brushed metal, tamper-and-waterproof shell that simply screams "Mission Impossible."
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A look back at where hard drives have been--and where they're going.
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roundup Plus: Think local, act Google...SanDisk to supply Samsung with miniSD...Hitachi unleashes 100GB notebook drives.
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Blog: The question of whether upcoming documentary was helped or hurt by bootleg copies that cropped up online may soon be answered.
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How your computer could be costing you thousands of dollars.
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Have adware and spyware commandeered your computer? An extreme solution: erasing your hard drive and starting over.
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roundup Plus:  Samsung to put hard drives in phones...IDC says external disk storage up...Lawmakers to vote on spyware, piracy bills.
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Recovering 736 missing digital images can be arduous -- and expensive. Here's the right (and wrong) way to do it.
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Plus: More DRM standards, and a self-encrypting hard drive.
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Your work computer just suffered a major meltdown. Maybe the operating system failed, or a virus crashed the hard drive.