Erasing files the safe way
Erasing files the safe way
Uber0n | 10013 Reads | Have you ever had a very secret file on your computer, which you didn't want anyone to see so you deleted it?
It may still be there. Waiting to be recovered by the police, FBI or another hacker ;)
When you delete a file the data will still be left on your hard drive. The only thing that actually happens is that the Operating System removes the reference of the file from the file system table. The actual contents of the file can be recovered using special recovery software, for example FinalData (http://www.finaldata.com/).
It's a bit like when you've written something on a paper and erased it using a rubber. The text is still there, and you can still read it if you want to. But if you write something new over the erased text, erase the new text and repeat this some times, the original text won't be readable anymore.
The same procedure can be used on a hard drive. The file will be emptied, overwritten, emptied, overwritten over and over again until it's safe to delete the file. The magnetical remains of the file will be covered by other data and the file will be (almost) impossible to restore.
If you don't want to write your own application to overwrite files (or spend your time doing this manually), you can download an application which does it for you.
My favourite is Eraser by Heidi Computrers Limited. You can find this application at http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php
– This is my first article, please rate it :D Peace Uber0n —
ghost 18 years ago
gd article :) i knew that when u delete a file it 'physically' stays there, but its labelled as "data to be written over" so this clarified some stuff about it.. 8/10
ghost 18 years ago
i got a link for a site that tells you how to view these Hidden files, i havnt got around to trying it yet, but ill include it anway.
http://www.microsuck.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml
ghost 17 years ago
gud article 4 those ppl who dont understand hard drives that well but maybe a little more info on how the file can be recovered so ppl who havnt had much experiance in this area cud learn more but overall im rating v, good
ghost 17 years ago
Look in the system volume information, there is a copy there as well, you probably didn't even know about that.
Uber0n 17 years ago
It doesn't keep a copy of every file there, it'd be a waste of 50% of the HDD space :p
ghost 17 years ago
oh , and in the page file ^^,
if you delete a file, windows sometimes stores it in the pagfile in plain text, ^^
ghost 16 years ago
For those of you using Windows Full time or dual booting, you may wish to consider CCleaner, formerly Crap Cleaner, a great program with the option to write over data up to 35 times.
ghost 16 years ago
Nice article, not so usefull for me though, since I don't have any plans of keeping some illegal files on my computer ;)
ghost 14 years ago
Really good article, now ima go write some perl to overwrite a file 36 times. Always trying to be the best.