Deadman switch...

[Nakatomi2010]

As my project of making a multiboot DVD comes slowly to a close I find myself with a 40gb hard drive full of data I don't want to lose, but also don't want to get into the wrong hands, I spent a good 2 to 4 months trying to perfect this thing for me (I'm a novice, and trying to do a bunch of different things, all while learning along the way) I don't want the next person who comes along behind me to just mess it all up... In fact I don't want the research material left over...

So I want to create a deadman switch... I am the only technician here and the owner and I have been having scrapes lately, primarily due to his being determined to ALWAYS be right, despite obviously being wrong, and worryingg about the wrong thing, i.e. I am now to testall CMOS batteries when they enter the store, because his sisters CMOS battery was apparently dying and I missed it... etc, etc....

I want to have to type something in every 24 to 48 hours on this computer, and if I don't the drive be corrupted... While trying to let it like like natural causes... Sort of like something I can integrate into the startup routine, so that when the system boots I have to locate and run a program that if not activated every say 36 hours for leway that the next time the system is started, while the Windows logo is scrolling, it's writing completely destroying the drive in the background, then deletes itself...

Is this possible, or I'm living in a dream world?

[cluberti]

Try something like DeepFreeze to safeguard the PC, or just having Ghost or RIS reimage or reinstall the PC every night.

As for the data, get a USB hard disk and copy it there, removing it from the PC's hard disk entirely. That way, you can lock away the USB hard disk or copy that data to another PC somewhere else that you feel safer having the data on.

[ravashaak]

You could also write a script which is called periodically via a scheduled task. The script could be made to appear like some minor system error, followed by an "Are you sure?" type of dialog, just to be safe. The dialog could be written counter-intuitively so that your boss would answer with common sense, which would initiate data deletion in the background, etc. There are free third-party utilities that you could use to create the pop-up (fake system error) dialogs. Of course, you would know how to properly answer the dialog, and prevent data deletion.

- Ravashaak