There may be times that you want to wipe and clean your hard drive, usb flash drive or internet history and we list the free software available below.
Many people think that when they delete a file, it goes to the recycle bin until it’s emptied where it’s deleted forever which is NOT the case. Some will turn off the recycle bin thinking that this will do the trick, but still, no go.
In a nutshell, a computer deletes a file by simply deleting the first letter of the filename, not the file as you would expect. It’s like a file cabinet that represents your hard drive and labeled file folders that represent files on your hard drive.
Imagine that rather than take the file folder out and destroying it, a person simply erase the first letter of the label of the file folder and leaves the folder in there. Well, that is EXACTLY what happens on the computer!
What you need is software that will wipe and clean the entire folder (file). Even then, just one wipe may not be good enough – it’s recommend that you wipe the data three times to be absolutely sure recovery is not possible (it’s called a Government Wipe).
Okay, so you know what you’re looking for, so here is the software.
Wipe and Clean
If you are looking for an excellent free tool to erase your hard drive, deleted files and cover your tracks, then this is the software for you. It’s open source and can be modified to your liking and used as many time as you like.
Site: eraser.heidi.ie
WinEraser
This software deletes your internet history and other files that windows stores in an attempt to remove sensitive information and protect your privacy. I don’t believe it does a government wipe, but it’s good enough that you won’t have to worry about the average user.
Site: sourceforge.net/projects/win-eraser/
Darik’s Boot And Nuke
This is an all-in-one boot disk that you stick into the computer, boot into and use to blow away your data forever. Dban will search for and destroy any data on any disks it finds – great for emergency operations plus it includes government wipes.
Site: dban.org
DWIP
Disk WIPe and imaging tool (DWIP) is created using the open source format for the Mississippi State University National Forensics Training Center, can’t get any better than that!
With DWIP, you can do a fast delete or DOD (Department Of Defense) type of wipe where there is no way to ever recover the data. Also verifies the wipes to make sure there is NO CHANCE of ever recovering the data again. Comes with logging and great reporting features! Removed – support contact not found
Site: [snip]
If you know of other programs to delete internet history and/or wipe and clean hard drives, and that is free, please feel free to leave a comment and let us know.
Windows Sysinternals (Mark Russinovich) makes a pretty good tool for this. It’s a free command-line tool called SDelete. Because it is a command-line tool, it’s geared more towards advanced users, but it’s still relatively easy to use and does allow you to adjust multiple different settings, such as the number of wipes/passes (and I do think there is a third-party GUI that you can download for it, but I’ve never tried it before). It has some good features, like the ability to wipe a specific file/folder or wipe all free space on a drive (which is useful for preventing the recovery of files you’ve already deleted). I’ve used it a lot before and it seems to work great. My only complaint is that running this tool with several passes on a big file/hard drive is somewhat slow compared to some other similar tools that I’ve tried (I’d like to believe this means it is more effective, but that might just be wishful thinking).
Anyway, you can download the tool, and find more info and instructions here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx
Hope this helps somebody.
Hi Shaun,
Sorry, but I had to snip that link – we get a lot of companies posing as visitors and trying to drop their link on the site, but that doesn’t work here.
Aevita wipe delete wizard is NOT free, it’s about $30 and you’re paying for something that you can get for free! Check out DWIP (above)
I use AEVITA Wipe & Delete Wizard and think it’s a good product, it’s a very fast file shredder and removes files so that you can never recover them again. Here is the link to download their program [snip]
What about CCleaner for your recycle bin? In the settings you have several file deletion settings beside the 1 pass through. You have NSA (7 passes), DOD 5220.22-M (3 passes) and Gutmann (35 passes).
Mike