SHRED DATA SECURELY

When you delete a file, it’s not physically removed from your PC; instead, the first few bytes of the file are overwritten with a tag that tells Windows that the file is deleted and the space it currently resides in is available when writing other files to disk. It speeds things up, but it’s not good for security.

Until the file is physically overwritten by another file, its contents are still retrievable. What’s more, even if the file is overwritten, it might be possible to retrieve part or all of it using sophisticated file recovery techniques. So, how do you protect yourself against that kind of technology?

Thankfully, there are tools that can securely wipe data from your drive. One that’s free and open source is Eraser (grab the latest stable version, 5.8.8, from https://eraser.heidi.ie/ download). During installation, enable the Windows Explorer extension to allow you to securely shred any file by right-clicking it and choosing Eraser > Erase. What about files you’ve previously deleted? Eraser can securely wipe all free space to make deleted files unrecoverable – right-click the drive in File Explorer, and click Erase > Erasing Free Space.

Open the main Eraser program and you can set up on-demand and scheduled tasks to periodically shred specific files, folders, or free space. By default, Eraser wipes data using the Gutmann technique – if this is too slow, choose Edit > Preferences > Erasing to choose a different method, including one of two used by the US Department of Defense.