I was asked recently about wiping hard drives and as I needed to wipe one, I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to write a blog article. I’m about to place a laptop on ebay and wanted to wipe a hard drive. Simply deleting files not the option, neither a quick format. No something to make it tougher to recover files was required. Enter Darik’s Boot and Nuke.

So what is Darik’s Boot and Nuke? Basically it’s a well put together small linux os with a nifty application to do the hard work and perform DoD standard wipes. I make no guarantees that your data isn’t recoverable, but come on now, DoD wiping is pretty good and if your that paranoid perhaps you should consider safely destroying the hard drive. Then shipping the little parts to opposite parts of the world, with clues… sorry where was I?

Here is what I did…..

1. I downloaded the ‘iso’ image from the website www.dban.org . It was in the zip archive dban-beta.2007042900_i386.zip

2. The iso image is an image of a cd. So I needed to burn the image to a cd. I did this via Windows 7′s own image burn option. Simply placing a blank 700mb cd (the image is only roughly 5mbytes though) in the drive and right clicking on the iso image called dban-beta.2006042900_i386.iso and selecting ‘burn disc image’. There are many free packages that can burn an iso image for you if your not using Windows 7. CDBurnerXP is an excellent alternative for instance.

3. Now on the laptop I checked that the bios was set to boot from a cd first. Very important as the newly created cd is bootable, but the laptop needs to know to boot from it before the hard drive.

4. I inserted the cd and booted the laptop.

5. On boot I selected to use ‘interactive mode’.

6. I only had the one hard drive present that I wanted to wipe. So I pressed space and the word ‘wipe’ appeared next to the drive. Obviously be very careful if you have more than one hard drive in the computer.

7. I pressed F10 to start the process.

Now during the process your screen might go blank. Panic not! Chances are the screen has just gone blank and you can press a key to see the display again if required. The process will take a while and for a 10gig hard drive it took an hour or so.

At the time of writing this post the Youtube service is down… or is it? Not entirely and thanks to http://techcrunch.com for pointing me in the direct you can still use it. Even though it says ‘Http/1.1 Service Unavailable’ when visit youtube.com you can still view videos via other pages. i.e. embedded and search. So to view the videos from my youtube channel you can click here: http://bit.ly/aJRC9T . This is a bit.ly link that takes you to a youtube search of my youtube username.

So you can sit back and be bored to death by my homemade videos. Else you can always use the search box at the top of that page and search youtube for other videos to watch. Just don’t click on my or anyone elses channel pages until youtube resolve the problem.

So I own a few laptops and none of them are that new. However they meet my requirements and I see no point in buying a new laptop at the moment. However for a while now I’ve been using a pcmcia wireless card as a replacement to the internal miniPCI wireless adapter. I decided it was time though to replace the internal adapter and stop using the pcmcia card. Here is what I did.

Please note: This is just a guide of what I personally did. You will void warranties if you take your laptop apart. Plus it is dangerous and you do this at your own risk. I recommend you ask a qualified expert to do upgrades.

Few years back I had salvaged a Broadcom BCM4306 miniPCI card out of a wireless access point router. There was no new firmware for the router and I had stopped using it. I knew the miniPCI card itself might prove useful one day.

Now all those years later I decided to use it. The laptop that required upgrading is a Toshiba Tecra 8200. It had different screw types over the wifi card area, which proved a pain to remove. Once the cover was removed it was easy enough to unclip and remove the old lucent miniPCI card.

photo above: old lucent miniPCI adapter

Only problem was the antenna connectors were in different positions and one of them wouldn’t reach the new connection on the replacement miniPCI card. This is where the fun started!

I took the laptop apart and followed the route the antenna leads took and realized I could adjust the cable to provide a little bit more length. So I removed two strips and adjusted the cable, then replaced the strips to secure the cable. I then at the front of the laptop area, roughly to the left of where the mouse pad sits adjusted the cable to pass on the extra cable.

photo above:  top right is where I placed a new strip. bottom right is where I eventually placed another strip and far left is where I had to feed the extra length through.

I was then able to connect both antenna connectors. I then put the laptop back together. Luckily I had suitable screws spare to replace the ones the wifi cover used. Please note the photo below shows the ram cover on first. Actually the wifi cover has to go on first and then the ram cover.

A little bit of research on the web and it turns out the Broadcom BCM4306 (my actual model is a BCM4306KFB) is also rebranded as a Dell Wireless 1490. So I downloaded Dell’s drivers. The Dell archive tried to auto install, but complained about no compatible hardware. I manually installed the drivers instead, rebooted and now can use the new adapter.

A quick review of Blizzard’s StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty beta. Well really more a first impression. This review relies on you at least having a basic knowledge of the original StarCraft, sorry.

I started drooling almost non-stop when I heard Blizzard had a beta programme. I already own the original StarCraft game, so via battle.net I asked to participate, downloaded their system checker and waited a couple of weeks, if that. Was it was worth the download?

Yes. Okay that one word isn’t an invite to stop reading this review, it’s worth continuing. The beta programme only allows playing of multiplayer maps against other players or the AI, but it’s still worth playing.

I would like to point out early on how smooth the installation of the software was and that my hardware firewall didn’t require configuration to play online and the computer’s own firewall only required a few clicks. Plus everytime you connect to battle.net via the StarCraft application it checks for updates, then automatically downloads and installs if required. Even if you’ve been away for a while, it will just keep upgrading until your up-to-date. Believe me this shouldn’t be underestimated, especially the firewall configuration aspect. Also I’ve played games if your running different version numbers of the same game, you can’t see friends and battle or co-op. A very smooth process and makes life easier for everyone.

So the gameplay? On first instance you think, I waited all these years for this? Updating graphics and a few touches here and there, how disappointing. Then it begins to dawn on you, this is no simple make over. Instead it’s what many other game companies could learn from. Produce a sequel that fits snuggly into the ‘canon’ and gives the impression and familiarity of the original, yet go beyond. Plus with so much time since the original, the impact is enormous.

Take the supply depots. In the original you would have then dotted everywhere and you still can in the sequel. However now you can lower them into the ground so they don’t get in the way of your units. What does it mean? Well other than not trapping units you can move units more freely around your base and you don’t focus as much on large building placement. Ideal improvement for ground unit movement.

The ships look impressive and the familiar voices are there when you select them. The ships gently sway when stationary, the ground units move and individual buildings all graphically look fantastic, even on a lower spec system. The attention to detail of individual unit actions is incredible. You actually enjoy seeing the enemy spawning units or attacking…. well until the moment you lose a unit!

So wait a minute no new units? Actually there are, plus buildings and upgrades. Don’t undestimate the updates to the existing units though, go delving to discover. The developers have seen other games come and go and have obviously learnt from others as well as this beta programme, among other influences. Such as a new building  you can track incoming enemy units, I remember such an item in Red Alert 2 Yuri’s revenge.

Let’s not forget though the maps themselves. Lush details, smooth, depth. The AI is fantastic and takes this game to another ‘level’. Okay so you probably know where this review is leading. Multiplayer wise if you loved the original StarCraft, your going to love this. It feels fresh like the first time I played StarCraft, yet familiar. It’s what a sequel should be, yet…… I have a suspicion I’m going to be even more impressed by the single player version when it’s released.

Good job Blizzard.