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I have always wondered why Windows doesn’t allow me to securely erase files. Of course, sometimes we accidentally delete files ; that’s why we have the Windows Recycle Bin. But sometimes we just need the opposite. We have to make sure that no one is able to undelete files from the disk with a file recovery tool. As you are an IT pro, I don’t have to tell how easy it is with these tools to undelete files.
File Shredder is an Open Source tool that allows you to erase files permanently with just a mouse click from your hard disk (but not flash drives). The tool integrates itself in the Windows Explorer’s context menu. To securely delete a file or folder you only have to right click it in Windows Explorer and navigate to the corresponding menu point.
You can also mark files to be deleted later. This can be useful if you want to erase a large number of files. To “shredder” files, every byte on the disk has to be overwritten. This can take some time for large amounts of data. Thus, if you want to erase multiple big folders, you had better choose “Remember to be deleted” later from the context menu. File Shredder will add those files to a list that you can view in its user interface. If you already have opened File Shredder, newly added files won’t show up right away. You have to first close and re-open the tool . Once you have added all files to be erased, you can shred these with one mouse click.
Another useful feature of File Shredder is the “Shred Free Disk Space” function. This will just overwrite unused disk space to ensure that files that have been “deleted” before can no longer be recovered. Note that this will keep your hard drive busy for quite some time. Therefore, run this function only when you intend to take a coffee break anyway.
File Shredder supports four different algorithms to wipe files from the hard disk: Simple One Pass, Simple Two Pass, Secure Algorithm with 7 passes, DoD 5220.22-M, Guttmann algorithm with 35 passes. Which algorithm is best for you will depend on how much time you have and on how paranoid you are. You should know that recent studies have shown that with modern hard drives, single pass algorithms are as secure as multiple on-track overwrite passes.
File Shredder is useful if you want to erase particular files and folders. If you want to wipe out a complete disk, I recommend Active@ Kill Disk.
Luckily these tools will become a thing of the past on SSDs supporting TRIM. All deleted data will be gone – securely.
Isn’t the main purpose of TRIM to prevent SSDs from slowing down? I wonder if it is as secure to delete files as with HD wiping tools. By they way, I should have mentioned that tools like File Shredder usually can’t securely erase data from flash drives.
Michael,
Yes, exactly. TRIM will cause the flash cells to be deleted. As such, we will probably see wiping tools upgraded to issue a TRIM command to the newly freed flash cells, making multiple rewrites unnecessary.
Ok, but is the app worth a look now? I use Active@KillDisk, for HDs, but have never really had a file/folder eraser.