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encrypt data

From this Sunday we’re starting a new season of reviews for some very helpful tools. We’ll aim to present accurate and unbiased review so that our readers can be sure to use or not to use software. Initially these reviews will be focused on utility tools that help boosting system performance and later on we will increase our focus.

To start with this Sunday, we will be looking at Wise Disk Cleaner.

Wise Disk Cleaner is a simple to use and fast application developed to free up disk space by removing files that are no longer used by any software on your system. Such files are usually not required and they just occupy space. So you have the option to remove all such junk. There are two versions available for Wise Disk Cleaner, one is free and another is pro that costs $19.95.

Installation: installation is quite simple and similar to other standard softwares. It integrates Ask.com toolbar so don’t forget to UN-CHECK it. After setup is complete, it prompts to download and install Wise Registry Cleaner which cleans windows registry and deletes entries that are not required any more.

Post Installation: After successful setup, the application launches the clean up wizard which helps you to find files to be removed. You can escape the wizard and come straight to application to view what is available. Wise disk Cleaner has an easy to use main interface where you have the option to start scans and select/unselect the files to delete permanently.

There are many options that you can customize to have WDC according to your needs. For example auto run, exclusion list and schedules determine when to run scheduled job and can skip the folder that you don’t want it to look into. You can run the scan either through cleaner wizard or manually. After the scan is complete, you can uncheck certain files you don’t want to remove. Rest you can delete permanently or send just to recycle bin so that if you’re not comfortable and feel that some program is unstable, you can restore it. To add some style, free version also comes with some cool skins.

What’s the difference between pro and free version: Pro version comes with Deleted File Recovery and Disk Scrubber. Rest of the features are same. Data File Recovery Tool recovers recovers deleted files and supports NTFS file system where as Scrubber helps deleting files permanently.

Conclusion: All in all, Wise Disk Cleaner performs effectively but you should always be careful when choosing to delete the “junk files” as some programs may become unstable. Another thing is that it does not give any prompt before deleting so if you accidently delete any file go and search in recycle bin but you wont find it if you permanently deleted it.

Now the Screenshot tour:

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I am always on the backfoot when it comes to handing out my personal USB or external HDD to my colleagues or even nearest of my friends since my data is lying open there and any one can just copy or view it. If you face similar situation like me you can consider TrueCrypt which is a light and open source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. TrueCrypt has been downloaded 10,114,479 times; wow it’s popular! Why were we missing it yet.

So how does it work? TrueCrypt creates an Encrypted Virtual Disk (EVD) within a file and mounts it as a real disk. So when you put some data in to EVD it is automatically encrypted on the fly. On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted or decrypted right before it is loaded or saved, without any user intervention. Data stored on encrypted disk can only be read if you provide authorization password. You can not even make hunch that which file it may be since entire file system is encrypted (e.g., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

Let’s come to the point…how actually it encrypts/decrypts the data…does it save something into my hard disk? Well if you have porn movies that you don’t want your office admins to see make an EVD, put your .avi or  .mpeg files there and be safe :) . You won’t be caught. Once you store it in EVD it will be completely encrypted and now that nobody is around you and you want to see the movie give your password and open the EVD. Now double click to open your video file. System will open media player to show your video. TrueCrypt decrypts and passes on video data chunks to RAM which is then played by media player.

Well, to conclude i would say that it is one of the best encrypting/decrypting open source tools and requires some thumbs up!

Here are the screenshots for TrueCrypt:

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