An Overview
To the untrained computer user, deleting a file on your computer using the general “highlight and delete” method seems to make the file disappear forever. However, these files can easily be recovered by any kind of file-recovery software, making the deleting process very insecure. If you have any kind of sensitive data on your hard drive and you delete it with this method, your privacy could be at stake!
So, what do?
Firstly, download this application.
“Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.”
Instead of just normally deleting that sensitive file, give it a Gutmann 35-pass overwrite. This will securely overwrite your file 35 times, effectively zeroing it out as if it never existed. This makes the file completely unrecoverable.
How To Erase a File
Install the program, and boot it up. You can have a look through the config settings if you wish to. I usually just close the program after this, and resume computing as normal.
When you need to securely erase a file….
Right Click it, and select the “Eraser” option in the right click menu. It should be pretty self explanatory.
And that’s all there is to it!
Side Notes…
Eraser supports the following levels of secure deletion;
- Gutmann (35 passes)
- Gutmann (Lite10 passes)
- US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306./E, C & E) (7 passes)
- RCMP TSSIT OPS-II (7 passes)
- Schneier 7 pass (7 passes)
- German VSITR (7 passes)
- US DoD 5220.00-M (8-306./E) (3 passes)
- British HMGIS5 (Enhanced) (3 passes)
- US Air Force 5020 (3 passes)
- US Army AR380-19 (3 passes)
- Russian GOST P50739-95 (2 passes)
- British HMG IS5 (Baseline) (1 pass)
- Pseudorandom Data (1 pass)
- First/last 16KB Erasure
