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KillDisk Thecus User Manual

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KillDisk Systems — User's Manual

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Summary of Contents for KillDisk Thecus

  • Page 1 KillDisk Systems — User's Manual...

  • Page 2: Table Of Contents

    KillDisk station overview..................7 What's in the box?.............................. 11 Utility software and external tools........................12 Menu and navigation............................12 Boot Menu................................14 Getting started with KillDisk................15 KillDisk installation and distribution......................... 15 Navigating through the application........................15 Disk Explorer view.............................17 Disk Bays view............................17 Disk Bays tree view..........................
  • Page 3 | Contents | 3 Erase labels preferences............................46 KillDisk station preferences..........................47 Advanced tools......................48 File Browser................................48 Hexadecimal Viewer............................49 SMART Monitor..............................51 Troubleshooting, Backup and System Recovery..........53 Hardware diagnostic file.............................53 System Recovery - Reset to Factory Settings....................53 System Recovery - Reinstallation with a bootable disk..................54 Application log......................

  • Page 4: Legal Statement

    User Guide. Active@ KillDisk, the Active@ KillDisk logo, KillDisk, KillDisk for Industrial Systems, KillDisk Desktop and Erasers Software are trademarks of LSOFT TECHNOLOGIES INC.

  • Page 5: Killdisk Overview

    Erase labels KillDisk Desktop KillDisk Desktop is the complete hardware disk erase solution - a workstation that is ready and configured to erase drives right out of the box. Without the need for additional peripherals, KillDisk Desktop come configured with everything you need to examine and erase HDD's, SSD's, USB's and any other attached memory storage devices, with printer and internet support for documentation and reporting.

  • Page 6: International Standards In Data Removal

    Active@ File Recovery, making your erased confidential data quite accessible. Using KillDisk for Industrial Systems, our powerful and compact utility, all data on your hard drive or removable device can be destroyed without the possibility of future recovery. After using KillDisk, disposal, recycling, selling or...

  • Page 7: Killdisk Station Overview

    5 LED indicators are used to give feedback to the user on KillDisk oeprations Power button Powers on the Thecus hardware unit. Reset button Resets the hardware unit. LCD display Describes current process, allows user to navigate and access KillDisk menus, initiate processes and see progress.
  • Page 8 Power cable connector Connector for a NEMA 5-15-P, 3 pronged power cable. Audio and microphone connectors Standard connectors. Not necessary for any KillDisk operations. 1 x eSATA port Standard, high performance eSATA port for connecting drives to the KillDisk Desktop hardware.
  • Page 9 1x HDMI port Standard HDMI port. May be used to connect an external monitor to the KillDisk Desktop system. 1 x VGA port Standard VGA port. May be used to connect an external monitor to the KillDisk Desktop system.
  • Page 10 6 - Active Disk Indicator Green, solid when disk bay is being used. 7 - Disk Status Indicator Green, flashing - Read/write activity Red, solid - erase finished Red, flashing - read/write error Figure 4: Thecus chassis for five disk bays, disk swapping...

  • Page 11: What's In The Box

    Screws for mounting hard drives in the disk bays. Product Manual Killdisk Desktop instructions and how-to guide. Acronis True Image Backup CD-ROM Create image backups of your latest KillDisk Desktop configuration using Acronis True Image. Can be used to revert configuration changes or system recovery.

  • Page 12: Utility Software And External Tools

    These tools available from main Tools menu. Menu and navigation Most KillDisk Desktop operations can be performed straight out of the box, with no additional peripherals using the interface included in the system. This interface consists of four buttons and an LCD display. This section will introduce you to KillDisk's built-in interface.
  • Page 13 | KillDisk station overview | 13 Figure 6: Thecus chassis for five disk bays, front panel controls and display Main Menu Erase From this select all or specific idle disks to initiate erase process. Use Up and Down buttons to make a selection and press ENTER button to start.

  • Page 14: Boot Menu

    To use certificate or label printing features you have to have local printer attached or network printer available and configured. Boot Menu Upon powering on the system, KillDisk Desktop loads an initial boot menu, visible in the GUI. This menu gives you several boot options to choose from: Load KillDisk Desktop This option simply boots into the configured KillDisk desktop environment.

  • Page 15: Getting Started With Killdisk

    KillDisk Desktop is distributed as a fully-configured hardware solution using the Thecus chassis - a robust multi-disk platform for disk erasure. Simply connect the system to power and the unit is ready to perform all Killdisk functions without any additional setup required.
  • Page 16 File menu bar The file menu bar contains can be manipulated to perform nearly any operation in KillDisk, such as accessing elements of the program such a settings and help, changing views and what is visible in the dashboard, opening tools, and navigating between KillDisk's windows.

  • Page 17: Disk Explorer View

    Disk Explorer view The Disk Explorer view is the main interface for the KillDisk application. Here, disks are visualized, can be selected and manipulated. The status of any procedures performed on the disks can be seen here, new procedures like cloning and erasure can be initiated, and drives can be organized into batches to be managed together.

  • Page 18: Disk Bays Tree View

    | Getting started with KillDisk | 18 Figure 9: Disk Bays view Settings menu Detailed view Toggle between detailed and simplified view of disk bay controls. Show removable devices Show or hide additional layout row for removable devices. Rows as Columns This setting can be toggled on/off to display the rows (defined by the disk bay layout) as columns in the Disk bays view.

  • Page 19: Local Disks Tree View

    | Getting started with KillDisk | 19 Figure 10: Disk Bays Tree view Settings menu Show inserted devices Displays all devices that are detected by the system device manager. Show partitions Displays all partitions on the disks. Show live volumes Displays live volumes detected.

  • Page 20: Property Views

    Displays all volumes detected on the local disks. Property views To show detailed information about any subject of an application, such as disk, partition, volume, file etc., KillDisk uses information views. When open, they follow selected changes and show information about the selected item automatically.
  • Page 21 | Getting started with KillDisk | 21 Property view To show property view for selected item do one of the following: • Click View > Windows > Properties • Click F4 keyboard short cut or • Use context menu command Properties for the same effect Figure 13: Property view example S.M.A.R.T.
  • Page 22 | Getting started with KillDisk | 22 Figure 14: SMART information for physical device example...

  • Page 23: Using Killdisk

    KillDisk Data Center is a powerful industrial tool to provide disk erasure solutions for large workstations with many disks. The features in this software are built with this goal in mind. This section outlines the key features of KillDisk and how they are used to erase single disks to large batches. Much of the software is highly customizable and this guide will help get you started with configuring KillDisk for your particular system, and using KillDisk to its' full potential.

  • Page 24: Disk Copy Options

    You can specify which sector the copy starts from on the source disks. If you don't know what this is for, leave as Error handling KillDisk has a broad capabilities to handle errors encountered during continues disk processing. These options could be set through global application preferences dialog or changed each time when disk processing starts.

  • Page 25: Xml Reports

    | Using KillDisk | 25 Ignore disk lock errors Errors encountered with KillDisk not being able to access locked disks are ignored. Ignore read/write errors Toggle whether errors should appear for read and/or write errors. XML reports KillDisks XML report contains the following parameters:...

  • Page 26: Examine Disks Physical Integrity

    | Using KillDisk | 26 Type of Information Specific data Partitioning Scheme Additional Report Attributes Fingerprint Information Initialize disk? Result Time and Date Started Disk Information Status Result Time Elapsed Errors Name of operation Examine disks physical integrity The disk examination feature is designed to scan the physical integrity of the disks selected for this operation.

  • Page 27: Disk Erasure

    Figure 15: Disk examination progress As seen in the image above, the green progress bar will fill the virtual drive slot in the KillDisk application. The percentage of the examination completed and the estimated completion time will also be shown in the slot. Once this process completes, the word "Examined"...
  • Page 28 | Using KillDisk | 28 • XML reports on page 25 [optional] • Disk copy options on page 24 Note: If only one disk was selected for erasure than you can specify boundaries of erased area for selected disk. Click OK button to begin disk erase process.

  • Page 29: Processing Summary

    | Using KillDisk | 29 Processing summary Once KillDisk's finishes processing any task, such as disk erasure or disk examination, a task complete dialog will appear with a summary of the task, containing all of the information pertaining to the operation. For example, this includes information like disks operated on, status of erasure and all associated certificates and reports.

  • Page 30: Reports, Certificates And Labels

    | Using KillDisk | 30 Reports, Certificates and Labels KillDisk maintains the highest standards in disk erasure, and with that, provides extensive documentation options for its' operations through Reports, and Labels. This section will discuss these features in length. Certificates...

  • Page 31: Reports

    Reports KillDisk gives you the option to save XML reports for any major operation it performs on a disk, such as Examination and Erasure. These reports contain all the information pertaining to the KillDisk procedure. The contents of the report are outlined below.

  • Page 32: Erase Labels

    Accessing the Print Labels Option Upon the completion of a major KillDisk operation, you will see a report dialog. In the list of completed tasks, you will see the Print Labels button, depicted below. Click it to enter the Print Label dialog.
  • Page 33 | Using KillDisk | 33 Figure 19: Opening to Print Label dialog. Print Label dialog This dialog will allow you to configure the labels and prepare them for printing. The top of the dialog will show you a list of the drives that will have labels generated for them. At any point in the operation, a sample of the label is shown in the Label Preview window on the left side.
  • Page 34 | Using KillDisk | 34 Page template options The print label dialog gives you access to a number of predefined standard templates and any custom templates you may create. These template may be easily selected without opening any additional dialogs and the details of the selected template will be displayed below the selection box.
  • Page 35 These settings define how the labels appear on the page. You may define the spacing in between labels on the page and the dimensions of the label grid. Once you've put in the proper measurements, KillDisk will take care of the formatting.
  • Page 36 | Using KillDisk | 36 Figure 22: Example of a print preview.

  • Page 37: Preferences

    | Preferences | 37 Preferences The KillDisk Preference window is the central location where KillDisk features can be configured. These features are split up into several tabs. To open Preferences dialog: • From main menu choose File > Preferences... or Use F10 keyboard shortcut at any time •...
  • Page 38 All operations performed in a KillDisk Data Center session will be saved in this log. Log file location Allows the user to specify where the application log file is saved. By default, this is set to KillDisk's root directory.

  • Page 39: Disk Erase Preferences

    Erase confirmation As a safety precaution to prevent accidental destruction of hard drives, KillDisk has the user type a keyphrase before the erase procedure is initiated (Figure 3.1.6). By default this precaution is set with the keyphrase "ERASE-ALL-...
  • Page 40 File Name template Here you may specify the name template for the XML reports. Because every erase operation will generate a separate report, KillDisk saves the date and time in the default settings to keep reports. The main tags available are:...

  • Page 41: Disk Examination Preferences

    Disk examination preferences The Disk Examination tab allows the user to configure the settings for KillDisk's examination procedure, namely the colors used to represent first, second and third grade disks and the examination XML report settings.

  • Page 42: Certificate Preferences

    File Name template Here you may specify the name template for the XML reports. Because every erase operation will generate a separate report, KillDisk saves the date and time in the default settings to keep reports. The main tags available are:...
  • Page 43 | Preferences | 43 Figure 30: Certificate Preferences Company information This section allows for the user to customize company features like: • Licensed name • Business name • Location • Phone • Disclaimer • Signature field for a company supervisor (optional) Additionally, custom logos can be added by clicking Set and selecting an logo through the file explorer.

  • Page 44: Error Handling Preferences

    File Name template Here you may specify the name template for the XML reports. Because every erase operation will generate a separate report, KillDisk saves the date and time in the default settings to keep reports. The main tags available are:...
  • Page 45 Number of Read/Write attempts Sets the number of attempts KillDisk make to perform an operation when an error is encountered. Sectors to skip after detection of a bad sector Sets the number of sectors ignored by the software when bad sectors are found.

  • Page 46: Erase Labels Preferences

    Toggle whether errors should appear for read and/or write errors. Erase labels preferences These preferences help you globally adjust label settings for the KillDisk system. These labels may be configured to any printer, page or label type using KillDisk's highly customizable labels features.

  • Page 47: Killdisk Station Preferences

    These settings define how the labels appear on the page. You may define the spacing in between labels on the page and the dimensions of the label grid. Once you've put in the proper measurements, KillDisk will take care of the formatting.

  • Page 48: Advanced Tools

    KillDisk offers a number of advanced tools to work in conjunction with the software to make operations easier to perform and the disks easier to navigate. KillDisk give you the power to browse through disks on both a file level and a low, HEX level, as well as analyze disk health with its' SMART monitor.

  • Page 49: Hexadecimal Viewer

    Toggles advanced disk information being shown. Show Partitions Toggles the disk partitions being shown. Navigator Pane Toggles the Navigator Pane view on and off. Hexadecimal Viewer KillDisk's hexadecimal viewer allows users to view the contents of connected drives in a Hex Editor view.
  • Page 50 | Advanced tools | 50 Figure 35: KillDisk's built-in disk editor To make it easier to navigate the Hex Editor view, KillDisk also offers a list of templates to help display the organization of the sectors on the disk by colored sections.

  • Page 51: Smart Monitor

    | Advanced tools | 51 SMART Monitor KillDisk also supports displaying SMART information pertaining to the disks it sees. This is done simply by navigating to the file menu bar and selecting Tools > Open SMART Monitor. This will open the SMART Monitor window shown below.
  • Page 52 | Advanced tools | 52 Refresh Rate This specifies the interval in seconds between updates to the SMART information displayed when the SMART Monitor is running. Running the SMART monitor The SMART monitor can either be refreshed manually or run to keep the information current. To run the SMART monitor, simply click the Start button in the action toolbar.

  • Page 53: Troubleshooting, Backup And System Recovery

    • USB keyboard This feature is built into the KillDisk Desktop system and may be accessed at any time to restore the system to original settings, erasing all user data, logs and configurations. 1. Starting from a "Powered off" state, power on the KillDisk Desktop hardware unit.

  • Page 54: System Recovery - Reinstallation With A Bootable Disk

    • Keyboard KillDisk includes a CD that can be used to create a recovery CD or USB for the system. This process will re-install KillDisk on the system during disaster recovery or need for a reinstall. 1. Run the KillDisk CD on the separate Windows machine. Launch it to access the Boot Disk Creator 2.

  • Page 55: Application Log

    | Application log | 55 Application log This log view monitors each action taken by the application and displays messages, notifications and other service information. Use the messages in this screen to observe and further understand the flow of the recovery process. To open and activate Application log view do one of the following: •...

  • Page 56: Appendix

    File slack space is the unused portion of a cluster. This space may contain residual confidential data from the file that previously occupied this space. KillDisk can wipe out the residual data without touching the existing data.

  • Page 57: Erase Methods

    MFT and possibly the performance of the computer. This space may also contain residual confidential data (file names, file attributes, resident file data) from the files that previously occupied these spaces. KillDisk can wipe out the residual data without touching the existing data. Windows system caching Windows reserves a specified amount of volatile memory for file system operations.
  • Page 58 | Appendix | 58 Canadian OPS-II The write head passes over each sector seven times (0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, Random). There is one final pass to verify random characters by reading. British HMG IS5 Baseline Baseline method overwrites disk's surface with just zeros (0x00). There is one final pass to verify random characters by reading.

  • Page 59: File Name Tags

    | Appendix | 59 Bruce Schneier The write head passes over each sector seven times (0xFF, 0x00, Random, Random, Random, Random, Random). There is one final pass to verify random characters by reading. Peter Gutmann The write head passes over each sector 35 times. For details about this, the most secure data clearing standard, you can read the original article at the link below: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/%7Epgut001/pubs/se%0Acure_del.html User Defined...
  • Page 60 | Appendix | 60 Disk name tags Values for these name tags retrieved from context device: {Serial ID} Disk serial number, retrieved from OS or from SMART attributes {Platform ID} Disk platform identification (may be vary due to OS format); {Product ID} Disk manufacturer id {Model}...

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