A list of tools for getting ahead of data breaches and data leaks, through dark web monitoring tools and scan for personally identifiable information and attack response.
Read MoreSystem
Software and utilities for data recovery from virtually any storage media. Simple and intuitive tools allow for recovery of damaged, inaccessible, or deleted files, documents, videos, and images from hard drives, solid-state drives, and memory cards.
Sysadmins and forensic specialists benefit from getting access to damaged or working virtual machines, corrupted or malfunction RAID 0-6 arrays, and other complex software and hardware configurations.
Among other tools:
- Linux Recovery: Free recovery of Linux files and partitions from Windows
- Partition Recovery: An expert tool for recovering lost partitions
- Linux Reader: File and folder access on Ext, UFS, HFS, ReiserFS, or APFS file systems from Windows
- Uneraser: Restore any deleted or corrupted file from NTFS, FAT32/exFAT/FAT, APFS, etc.
Source: https://www.diskinternals.com/download/.
Read More- Ubuntu
- Xubuntu
- Linux Mint Xfce: https://windowsforum.com/threads/top-lightweight-linux-distros-to-revive-old-windows-pcs-in-2025.369406/
- Raspberry Pi Desktop
- Fedora
- MX Linux
- Linux Mint
- Manjaro
Source: derived from https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/best-linux-distros-for-reviving-an-old-pc.
Read MoreA list of tech platforms for productivity purposes, as alternatives to larger platforms.
Read MoreThere’s a command-line utility called shred, which overwrites data in a file or a whole device with random bits, making it nearly impossible to recover.
First of all, you need to identify the name of the device.
This might be something like /dev/sdb or /dev/hdb (but not like /dev/sdb1, that’s a partition). You can use sudo fdisk -l to list all connected storage devices, and find your external hard drive there.
N.B. Make sure it is the correct device, picking the wrong device will wipe it.
Unmount all currently mounted partitions on that device, if any. Then run the following, replacing /dev/sdX with the name of your device:
sudo shred -v /dev/sdX
This will overwrite all the blocks on the device with random data three times, the -v flag is for verbose and will print the current progress.
You can add the option -nN to only do this N times, to save time on large capacity devices. This might take a while, depending on the size of your external hard drive (I think it takes twenty minutes or so for my 4 GB flash drive).
You can also set all bits to zero after the last iteration by adding the option -z, I prefer to do this.
sudo shred -v -n1 -z /dev/sdX
After this, you would have to repartition the device. The easiest way is to install GParted and use it:
sudo apt-get install gparted
gksu gparted
Choose your device in the upper-right corner list. Then select Device -> Create partition table to create a partition table on the device.
Then add a single partition that uses all of the unallocated space on the device, choosing fat32 as the file system. Apply the changes by click the Apply button (the green checkmark) in the toolbar.
noScribe is an AI-based software designed for transcribing audio, particularly useful for qualitative social research and journalistic interviews. The software is free, open-source (licensed under GPL-3.0), and operates entirely offline, meaning no data is sent to the cloud, ensuring privacy. It can recognize up to 99 languages and distinguish between different speakers, which is particularly helpful for interviews with multiple participants.
The software includes an editor that allows users to review, verify, and correct the transcriptions manually. It utilizes advanced AI models, such as OpenAI’s Whisper, faster-whisper by Guillaume Klein, and pyannote by Hervé Bredin, for the transcription process.
It requires a relatively up-to-date computer to function efficiently, slower systems may result in long transcription times. The software is around 3.7 GB, poor audio quality may lead to transcription errors.
noScribe aims to reduce the difficulty of transcription for researchers and journalists, offering a reliable, private, and easy-to-use tool for processing interviews.
Find a review of noScribe (in German) here: https://sozmethode.hypotheses.org/2315.
Source: https://github.com/kaixxx/noScribe
Read MoreKaren’s Directory Printer, the File Cataloging Utility for Windows, prints the name of every file on a drive, along with the file’s size, date and time of last modification, and attributes (Read-Only, Hidden, System and Archive) into a file: https://www.karenware.com/powertools/karens-directory-printer.
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