Tag Archives: Shred

Shred Unwanted Files On Mac To Prevent Recovery Using Incinerator

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If you have a hard copy of a document or form that you never want anyone to see, you can shred it, burn the bits, and scatter them to the four corners of the Earth in hopes that the CSI team never finds them. It’s effective enough for physical documents but when it comes to files on your computer, deleting a file from your hard disk and your trash sounds as if it should be enough to get rid of them. However, these files can still be recovered either by using file recovery apps, or employing people from CSI. We've covered a tip on permanently erasing files from OS X using the Terminal, and where it is sufficient if you seldom need to securely delete files, the method isn't all that convenient for frequent use or if a lot of files are involved. Incinerator is a free app available in the Mac App Store that provides a more effective way to delete your files. It’s a file shredder that gives you free rein to choose how many times a file is shredded. You can choose to keep a dummy copy of the shredded file, or have the app delete it automatically once it’s been shredded. Read More

Shred Files From Windows Context Menu Using Secure Eraser

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The default Windows method for deleting files and folders sends them to the Recycle Bin and anyone can restore the data back. In order to completely remove the files from your system, you need to use the Empty Recycle Bin option. Deleting personal or sensitive files and folders, even from the Recycle Bin is not enough, as anyone with the proper knowledge and tools, such as the previously covered Recuva, can recover the deleted files. Unless you use a file shredder for deleting your files, the data remains recoverable unless new data is written in its place. Secure Eraser is a file and folder shredding tool that lets you wipe all traces of the selected data from your computer by using various shredding methods, including German Standard, Peter Gutmann Standard, US DoD, etc. Other than securely deleting files and folders from your system, you can delete whole partitions, perform secure deletion of already deleted files, clean your system, and delete redundant registry entries. Read More

File Secure Free: Lock External Drives, Backup, Encrypt & Shred Files

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In the past, we have covered an umpteen number of applications to encrypt confidential data, shred files, and backup & sync files, but most file security applications are designed to perform a single function. Interestingly enough, we have discovered a new data protection and privacy software that lets you perform all data security operations over a set of files, under one hood. File Secure Free is a one-stop-shop for all your data security needs and comes packed with four major tools i.e. File Backup, File Encryptor, File Shredder and Lockup, the latter of which easily lets you protect your thumb drives and external hard drives with a password. More details after the jump. Read More

EraserDrop: File Shredder That Adds A Desktop Icon For Drag & Drop Shredding

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Erasing files and folders using the Delete function only sends them to the Recycle Bin. To permanently delete the data, you have to empty your Recycle Bin, but emptying the Reclye Bin only removes the pointer to files and folders, allowing users to overwrite data on the sectors where the deleted files were stored. For this reason, one can easily recover deleted files using a powerful data recovery application like previously featured Recuva. This is why it's always advisable to use data shredding tools to securely remove data off the hard disk in order to prevent private information from being compromised. In the past, we have covered quite a few data shredders, such as xShredder (reviewed here) and TurboShredder (reviewed here). Today, we came across a portable data shredding software called EraserDrop, which places a shell icon on your desktop, and allows you to delete files and folders just by dragging them over it. It is, effectively, an alternative to the Recycle Bin for files that you plan to shred. Additionally, it supports a total of 5 file shredding techniques including Gutmann, DoD 8-306 E-C and E, Schneier’s Method, DoD 8-306 E and Pseudorandom. Each technique uses a different number of data deletion passes to ensure secure deletion of the selected files. Read More

Quickly Shred Large Files In Windows via Drag And Drop With Zer0

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For many users, it becomes necessary to not just delete confidential files permanently, but to shred them to avoid file recovery. While there are a number of handy file shredding applications for Windows, Zer0 is perhaps the most minimalist of them all. It is a user friendly file shredder, which can delete files securely to make them unrecoverable. It provides a convenient drag and drop utility and allows instantly shredding files in a single click. Zer0's high level security algorithm makes it impossible to recover deleted files by conventional recovery tools, and the deletion process itself is lightning fast. During testing, we spcified a 573MB file for deletion with Zer0, and it was deleted in a split second. The tool makes use of multiple system cores, and hence, provides maximum efficiency, without hanging the application. Read More

DPWipe: Drag & Drop To Shred Files And Folders Using Multiple Methods

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When you delete something from your computer  in the normal way, it goes into the Recycle Bin. You can select the Restore option available in the Recycle Bin to recover anything that you did not want to delete. Even after you delete the data from the Recycle Bin, it is still recoverable using the proper tools. This recovery option is what is used by data recovery tools that allow you to bring back accidentally delete documents, images and other important files. The data is still recoverable because when an item is deleted, usually, only the MFT (Master File  Table) entry is removed from the hard drive and the file data is actually still there. So, if you are deleting any sensitive files, keep  in mind that they are still recoverable. Previously, we have covered file shredding gadgets such as Multi Trash and Freeraser that allow you to shred files by dropping them over the gadget, as well as applications such as Hardwipe and Secure Wipe that let you erase file and folder contents. The aforementioned gadgets don’t allow you to use different shredding methods, while the applications don’t support the drag & drop functionality. DPWipe is a file and folder shredder that allows you to wipe files by just dragging and dropping them over the application. It allows you to choose a wiping method, such as Single Overwrite with Zeroes and Psedoram, RCMP, DoD Wipe etc. Read More

How To Completely Wipe/Erase A Hard Disk Drive [Step-by-Step Guide]

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You may know that when you delete a file, it doesn't actually get removed from the hard disk. This is because, when an OS, including Windows, attempts to delete a file, it removes the pointer or reference to the file, making it inaccessible to user. However, the low-level data recovery applications can still be used to view and restore deleted data from storage mediums. When file is deleted from the system, OS makes the space, which was previously used by that deleted file, available for new data write operations, and if OS doesn't fill that deleted space, data recovery application doesn't take long to fully restore the data from unfilled tracks. Therefore, it's always advisable to perform a multi-cycle shred operation over entire hard drive to prevent data theft. You could use CCleaner and other data shred/disk wipe applications (Secure Wipe, Hardwipe, HDShredder etc, for instance), to permanently delete the data, but file shredding can't be performed over the partition where Windows is installed. In this post, we will discuss how to fully wipe out entire hard disk, and make the deleted data unrecoverable.

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Recycle, Delete And Shred Files With Multi Trash Gadget [Windows 7]

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Generally, there are three ways of getting rid of unwanted files and junk data. Of these, the two common options are to send the files to the Recycle Bin or use shift + del to remove them permanently. However, the task isn’t completed at this point, and you still need to execute a third option of shredding the file so it cannot be restored via any means, such as, using Freeraser and Moo0 File Shredder. These file-removing options are commonly found in different software applications, but Multi Trash combines all three tasks to offer a combo file remover gadget that can recycle, delete and shred files at one platform. Read More

Shred – Permanently Delete Files In Ubuntu Linux

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In case you want to delete some confidential data from your computer just to make sure that it is no longer accessible to anyone, then do not delete the file using the regular rm command because there will still remain a chance that someone might use a software to recover your deleted data before the specific storage area is overwritten by new data. The proper way to permanently dispose of such data in Linux is the shred command. Read More