BCWIPEPD - Command-line wiping utility intended to shred
contents of whole hard drives, including system data areas.

Jetico, Inc., 1995-2000

IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND 
PRECAUTIONS BEFORE STARTING TO USE THE BCWIPEPD UTILITY.
THE UTILITY IS INTENDED FOR SPECIFIC SHREDDING PURPOSES,
INPROPER USING OF BCWIPEPD MAY LEAD TO LOSING DATA ON 
HARD DRIVES, RECOVERING OF DATA IN THIS CASE WILL BE 
ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE!

NOTE! BCWIPEPD MUST NOT BE USED TO DO A DISK CLEAN-UP!

********************* Contents *****************************

1. Introduction.
2. Jetico Inc. Wiping Utilities
3. Main features of BCWIPEPD
4. Using the BCWIPEPD utility
5. How to run BCWIPEPD from the command-line prompt
6. If You Want to Comment on the Product

************************************************************


1. Introduction
----------------

When you delete sensitive files from a disk on your computer, 
operating system (DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX and others) 
does not erase these files contents from the disk - it only deletes 
'references' on these files from some system tables. Contents of 
the deleted file (or file's `body') continue to be stored on the 
disk and can be easily restored using any disk tool utility.

To provide complete and reliable destroying of data on computers,
special wiping utilities are used. A "wiping" term is used here to 
call a process of shreding a contents of a file or a disk space. 
It will be impossible to restore the data stored before on the disk 
or in the file if you run a wiping utility. 


2. Jetico Inc. Wiping Utilities
---------------------------------

Jetico Inc. company develops wiping utilities for various purposes and
categories of users:

1. BCWipe for Windows 95/98/NT - shell extension utility with a friendly
Windows interface. Being incorporated into Windows Explorer's menus, it allows 
user to easily call wiping commands. Set of wiping commands and options 
is powerful enough: wiping files, free disk space, swap files, file slacks
and directory entries. At the same time BCWipe cares about file system
structures and does not allow to shredd them. 

2. BCWIPEPD utility is designed for more specific purposes, mainly for 
government agencies, banking and large corporations, where there is a need 
in a safe destroying contents of hard drives before computers can be got
away from the companies. BCWIPEPD is a powerful utility designed as a 
command-line program to minimize size of executable, avoid special 
installation procedures, hence, to provide a fast way for wiping disks 
on large number of computers without wasting time on installation the 
program on every computer separately.


3. Main features of BCWIPEPD
-----------------------------

1) The utility is able to destroy contents of whole hard drives, 
including partition tables, boot records, filesystem structures,
operating system files and user files.

2) The utility shredds data according to U.S. Department of Defense 
recommendations to destroy data (DoD 5200.28-STD): seven pass 
extended character rotation wiping.

3) Contents of hard drives is wiped without any dependance of filesystem
used to format the drives (FAT, NTFS, HPFS or other).

4) BCWIPEPD is designed to provide a high performance of shredding. 
On modern hard drives performance of write operations is up to 15 MBytes/sec.
So seven pass wiping performance is up to 2.5 MBytes/sec.


4. Using the BCWIPEPD utility
-------------------------------

The BCWIPEPD utility uses low-level disk access functions. Such kind of 
functions are available in DOS 7.0 and Windows 95 OSR2/98 operating systems, 
but generally are forbidden in other operating systems (f.e. Windows NT), 
or it would require installation of special drivers.

To get the utility working as fast as possible and avoid additional 
installation procedures, BCWIPEPD is designed for DOS v.7 (or higher), 
and Windows 95 OSR2/98 operating systems.

Generally there are two ways of using BCWIPEPD:

1. If operating system on computer, which hard drives have to be wiped, 
is DOS/Windows 95/98, BCWIPEPD should be copied to hard drive, or run 
from network or removable disk. 

NOTE: AS SOON AS YOU RUN BCWIPEPD, CONTENTS OF WHOLE HARD DRIVE(S) ON 
COMPUTER WILL BE COMPLETELY DESTROYED. IT MEANS THAT ALL FILESYSTEM 
STRUCTURES, OPERATING SYSTEM FILES AND USER DATA, AS WELL AS DISK FORMAT 
INFORMATION ON HARD DRIVE WILL BE DESTROYED. HENCE, FURTHER FUNCTIONING OF 
OPERATING SYSTEM WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE.

2. If operating system on computer which hard drives have to be wiped, 
is not DOS/Windows 95/98,  BCWIPEPD can be run from DOS/Windows 95 boot 
diskette.

Procedure of wiping hard drives on not-DOS computers is the following:

a) Create boot diskette on DOS/Windows 95/98 computer. To create boot 
diskette run standard "format" command:
  > format /s a:

b) Copy the BCWIPEPD.EXE program to the boot diskette.

c) Boot the computer using DOS boot diskette and run BCWIPEPD program
to wipe hard drives.

Since BCWIPEPD uses low-level disk access, hard drives will be wiped 
without any regards to filesystem used on the hard drive partitions 
(whether it is DOS/Windows filesystem or not).

NOTE 1: creating of boot diskette may be done once only, and then hard 
drives on group of computers can be wiped using the same diskette. It 
saves time of personell required to wipe drives on big amount of computers.

NOTE 2: wiping process of several hard drives will be faster if user 
creates batch files, where all options for BCWIPEPD are set once only.
Please read the following section to get detailed information about the
options and examples of creating batch file.


5. How to run BCWIPEPD from the command-line prompt
------------------------------------------------------

The BCWIPEPD program is run from the command line, commands and options 
must be entered as arguments to the BCWIPEPD command. 

If BCWIPEPD is run without parameters, the program will display a help
information about its usage.

Usage:

> BCWipePD (commands) [-options]

Commands:
 i - display information about available physical drives

 w - wipe physical drive. One of the options, -dX or -fX must be used 
     together with the command (X is a drive number, i.e. 0,1 ...). 
     Use wSILENT command to skip drive wiping confirmation in batch mode.
     Please be careful with the SILENT option.

 r - read sector. The command is useful for verification of wiping process.
     The following options must be used together with the command:
     -sX, where X is a sector number, i.e. 0,1 ...
     -dX or -fX, where X is a drive number, i.e. 0,1 ...

Options:
 -dX  ( X is a disk number )    - specify hard drive number, or '*' for all
                                  hard drives

 -fX  ( X is a disk number )    - specify floppy drive number,  or '*' for all
                                  floppy drives

 -sX  ( X is a sector number )  - specify low 32-bit word of sector number

 -shX ( X is a sector number )  - specify high 32-bit word of sector number
                                  (default setting is 0)

 -pX  ( X is number of passes ) - specifies number of passes 
                                  (default setting is seven passes according 
                                   to U.S. DoD 5200.28-STD)

 -lS  ( S is a file name )      - append output information to log file


Examples: 

> BCWIPEPD i
  displays information about physical disks on computer.

> BCWIPEPD w -d0
  wipe hard drive number 0 according to U.S. DoD 5200.28-STD

> BCWIPEPD w -d1 -p1 
  wipe hard drive number 1 using one pass wiping

As well, it is possible to create batch file (say, wipe.bat) to simplify 
using of the BCWIPEPD program. Contents of such batch file may be the 
following:

BCWIPEPD w -d* -lWiping.log
BCWIPEPD w -f* -lWiping.log

The batch file may be run from floppy disk where BCWIPEPD.EXE has to be 
also placed. Then the wipe.bat file may be run on every computer, which 
hard and floppy drives has to be wiped.


6. If You Want to Comment on the Product
----------------------------------------

If you have a product suggestion or comments on how to make BCWIPEPD better, 
e-mail us at this Internet address:

        support@jetico.com

Be sure to include your name, the version number of BCWIPEPD, and your 
Internet address with all correspondence.

Please visit our WWW-site to get information about our other products,
Frequently Asked Questions lists, and other:

        http://www.jetico.com

Note that your comments become a property of Jetico, Inc.

We would like to thank you for the time you have spent with us.
We hope that it has been useful to you.

Jetico team
