Cipher Command to Wipe a Directory

In Command Prompt you can use the cipher command to wipe a directory and prevent deleted files from being recovered. The cipher command will write random data to a folder that you specify. You simply need to follow these steps.

1. Go to Start and type 'cmd'. Windows command prompt will open.

2. Then enter:

cipher \w:c:\[your folder path]

This command will not remove active, undeleted files, but it will wipe any files which have already been deleted from this folder.

Windows Command to Combine Multiple Text Files and Insert the File Names at the Beginning of the Con

This is a demonstration of a a simple script you can run in Windows command prompt to combine multiple text files and add the file names of each to where each source file begins. See my how to video posted to YouTube:

1. In the folder with your source files, press CTRL + SHIFT and right click. Then chose 'Open command window here'.

2. In command prompt, type:

findstr "^" *.txt

and then make reference to a new folder where you will write a new text file merging the source files together.

>C:\Process\output2.txt

Press return to run the script. So the full script is just:

findstr "^" *.txt >C:\Process\output2.txt

3. The new text file that is generated will combine the full contents of the source files, and add in the file names at the beginning of each file's content.

If the original text file had line breaks, the file name will be added at the beginning of each line. If not, it will just be added at the beginning of the file's contents.

An example of where this command would be useful is a case where you want to add the text from emails to a new column in a spreadsheet to which you've exported the metadata for those emails.

Robocopy

When you copy data from a hard drive on to a flash drive or other storage device, normally you'll notice the meta data for the file is altered. Instead of the date created on the source, you end up with the current time & date at the point of transfer. For the purposes of data collection you want to preserve the original meta data values intact. In order accomplish this, make use of the Robocopy command in Windows.

You just need to go to the folder you want to copy data from, press SHFT + CTRL + Right click and choose 'Open Command Window Here' , and then enter the file path of the folder from which data is to be collected (use quotes if the path has spaces), the path of the destination, and forward slash 'E'. See for example this command:

I:\Litigation Support\Electronic Discovery\EDRM>Robocopy "I:\Litigation Support\ Electronic Discovery\EDRM" H:\ /E

So when we collect data from a folder like this:

. . . and run the Robocopy command - 'Robust File Copy for Windows' . . . the data is copied in a special fashion

. . . so the Date Created field is not altered.

#Datacollection #Robocopy