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How to wipe data from your hard drive
Since most of us store large amount of personal and confidential data on computers, data security is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. If you are planning to donate or return the computer or dispose the hard disk and do not want your photos, documents, sensitive files, credit card numbers, passwords and other information stored on your hard drive fall into the wrong hands, it is essential to completely delete all confidential data from a hard disk. Even if you believe you don't have any sensitive information stored on your computer, it is still important to keep it safe. But simple deletion with regular methods is not sufficient to protect the security of your data as only pointers to the files are removed but the files are still there leaving the possibility to restore them. If you want to make sure that your confidential information is gone forever, you will need to wipe the hard disk using special software.
Are deleted files really gone from the disk
If you delete files, they are not really gone from the disk. Using the Windows Delete command doesn't immediately delete a file. The system removes the reference to the file making it invisible and marks the disk space occupied by this file as 'free'. However the deleted file can be recovered using data recovery software as it exists on the hard disk until its space is overwritten with another file.
Formatting a hard disk is more secure than deleting files as it destroys the data structure making file recovery more difficult. But formatting a hard disk does not remove the information from the disk and there is still a chance to recover deleted data.
Fortunately, physical destroying a hard drive is not the only way to prevent sensitive data from being compromised. In order to securely wipe disk data, it must be overwritten with new data.
What is disk wiping and how it works
When deleting confidential data from a hard drive and removable device, it is important to erase all traces of the data beyond recovery. Wiping does not really delete information, it actually overwrites the existing data. You can protect sensitive data by using a piece of disk wiping software that will actually overwrite your entire hard drive with new data. There are various wiping tools that can completely wipe out the hard disk, including the free disk space. Some tools can also wipe data from USB drives, memory cards, etc. Depending on the selected wiping algorithms your data could be overwritten with a single pass of zeroes, or you could use more advanced wiping algorithms which include multiple passes and wipe the disk using various random patterns.
Delete Files Permanently is the best solution to securely wipe disk data. It allows you to securely wipe all data on hard drives using the predefined wiping scheme. Delete Files Permanently supports 14 wiping algorithms of various security levels and will also let you create a custom wiping scheme. With Delete Files Permanently you can wipe the entire disk or individual files and folders to securely delete sensitive data before discarding or donating your computer. Using the program you can also wipe the free space while keeping existing files to completely erase previously deleted data. In addition to hard disks Delete Files Permanently supports USB drive, memory cards and removable devices. Delete Files Permanently is available in both reular and portable versions.
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