Notes on Jungsoft's HDD-Sheriff PCI

Notes on Jungsoft's HDD-Sheriff PCI

This is a device, installed in a PCI slot, that promises to protect the C: drive of a Windows computer from persistant modifications. That is, after each reboot the partition will be restored to the status quo ante. Thus it is intended for public computers which are subject to modification by users, but for which any modifications should be temporary. For us, this was a considerable advantage over products that protected the drive from any modification at all, which would not have suited our environment.

HDD-Sheriff also offers a feature to allow a persistent partition where users can store files through reboots, although this is poorly documented. This was also important in our application.

The product has been effetive in reducing the amount of clueless reconfiguration imposed upon our public Windows 98 computers, especially changes to the default printer selection and network configuration. Users are still able to install software and drivers temporarily, which we endorse.

Notes:

• We received version 5.6.3 of the software in the retail box, which also includes a printed manual for version 4.5 of the software. The software has changed sufficiently that a user might have trouble with the installation if (s)he followed the instructions literally. A more accurate two page instruction sheet is available on the Jungsoft web site, but only as a PDF image-only file (so that robots can't index it, presumably). The text of that file is available here in HTML format. [More recent purchases have included a more recent manual, and a printed copy of the instruction sheet]

• The 4.5 manual has several pages of explanation of various menus available if you select "F10" but just pressing that key won't bring up the menus, except in the very special case that the machine is in the boot process and displaying the "Starting HDD Sheriff" message on the screen. There is an option (default off) to display the "Press F10 for menus" message at the same time.

• There is nowhere any satisfactory explanation of the "unprotected partition" feature. It appears that during the disk reorganization process the C: drive can be repartitioned into C: and D:, and if the user requests during the installation, a "My Documents" directory will be placed in D: and the desktop icon will be modified to point there.

  There will continue to be "C:\My Documents" directory and which of the rival directories any particular application defaults to is not well defined. After installing HDD-Sheriff we found that WordPerfect 2000 continued to default to the C: partition version of "My Documents". After removing WP and reinstalling it, the default changed to the D: drive version, as we preferred.

• After booting, selecting Start|Programs|Jungsoft|HDD-Sheriff for the first time starts the status display program in background and puts a small star in the applet tray. The second visit to the same link turns on the menu display for HDD-Sheriff. A left click on the star has no apparent function, a right click offers a help file, which is apparently empty.

• The PCI card had a 2002 copyright date, and the manual a 2001 date, suggesting that Jungsoft consider the product not yet at end-of-life, however most of the files on the driver disk were dated in 1998 and we were unable to obtain technical support by telephone or email.

• Many of the retail packages of the PCI card that we purchased locally contain a driver disk for the USB version. The correct driver files appear to be available from www.jungsoftusa.com. That site also has links to manuals, at least some of which were live today.

• Although the package is marked as XP compatible, we are unable to install the software on XP computers. The process hangs during initialization. (However see the letter link below for an alternative view).

• If the package is uninstalled, it leaves behind the D: partition. This would appear to be the correct response. However, a reinstallation ignores the existing D: partition and tries to create a new D: partition out of the remaining C: space.

We are very interested in hearing from anyone with additional information about the use of this hardware. Please write or call. An updated version of this page will be kept at http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/hdd-sheriff.html

There are software-only packages that claim similar abilities, including Clean Slate and Deep Freeze among others. However we do not yet have any experience with these.

Several rreaders with comments on my analysis have sent me letters. They both refer to an informative page about this product maintained by Bit Distribution of Australia. That page offers firmware upgrades and a list of incompatible hardware, which is not available on the Jungsoft web site.

Daniel Feenberg
feenberg at nber.org
617-588-0343
20 July 2004