Permanently Wipe Data
Some security specialist believes that physically destroying the hard disk is the only way you can really be sure, that your data will not be compromised. But pounding your hard disk with a hammer will significantly reduce the usefulness of the computer you are donating or selling. So unless your personal computer is too old to be reused, it’s better to reformat your system hard drive or scrub it down with a reliable disk wiping application, so that someone else can put it to use without being able to retrieve any of your personal files from it.
Now the question arises, why exactly do you need to wipe the free disk space of the system hard drive before selling or disposing it? Wouldn’t the mere deletion of files be enough to keep our computer secure? The answer is “Not necessarily”. With the help of specially designed data recovery software, hackers can easily retrieve files that you have deleted from your computer. This is because whenever a file is deleted using Command prompt or with Shift+Delete key combination, it cannot be restored back from Recycle Bin, as it bypasses the Recycle Bin. If you think by emptying the Recycle Bin, you can erase data permanently from your system hard disk, then it is not correct. Even formatting or reformatting the hard disk does not destroy the data permanently. What actually happens is, when you delete a file, the pointer referring to the file location are erased, not the actual data. So all deleted files, can be easily restored using a variety of data recovery software, which are available in the market.
There are instances when a particular file or folder is deleted beyond the manual recovery, without third party utility. Or when a file is lost due to formatting or reformatting the drive, it is recoverable, which is good if deletion has happened unintentionally or accidentally. What if you want to erase your private data like your account details, company’s private data, passwords, etc., permanently from your system hard disk before selling it to someone. So, in this case if you are planning to sell or dispose your computer hard disk then, before doing so you need to wipe all your data from it. You can easily wipe files and free disk space using a reliable wipe disk utility. This wipe disk software will simply overwrite the drive data with the random values, which makes the original data irrecoverable.
Wipe disk application is one of the best file shredder tool available in the market, which uses 9 different shredding methods that is completely based on different security standards. The supported data shredding patterns are Fast Zero overwrite, Random overwrite, NATO standard- North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Peter Guttmann Secure Deletion etc. This software has customized inbuilt scheduler, which will shred data as per the scheduled event or time. You can download the free demo version of this software. This powerful application is also capable of wiping the entire free space from your hard disk, making it impossible to recover deleted files. This utility can even wipe browser history forever from different browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Fire Fox, Safari, IE etc. It presents a hierarchical explorer view, to select the files and the folders you would like to shred. This software provides nine different shredding methods, based on different security standards approved by various government agencies like the U.S. Police Department, U.S. Department of Defense and standards approved by many other government organizations around the world. Remo File eraser software shreds the selected files completely, without affecting the existing files or folders on your hard disk. The most advantage point is that, it is very easy for users to interact with this software. Because, all steps are mentioned very clearly with snapshots. This tool can also erase files from memory cards and supports different versions of Windows Operating System like, Microsoft Windows vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows server 2003, and Windows server 2008 also. Moreover, this efficient software can also wipe NTFS drive on all versions of Windows OS.
Procedure to Wipe Free Disk:
Step 1: Download Drive Wipe and install the application.
Step 2: Launch the software by selecting the software from Start Menu-> Programs or by clicking on shortcut menu on desktop. Once the software is launched, the main screen appears as shown in Figure 1. Select the USB drive from the list of logical drives and physical hard drives then click on Next button.
Figure 1: Select the drive
Step 3: Now, Select the suitable data shredding pattern among 9 different data shredding patterns and then click on Next button to securely wipe the partition as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: Select data shredding pattern to wipe drive
Step 4: As you click on Next button, confirmation message is displayed. Click on OK button to continue the data deletion process of selected drive.
