![]() With over a decade of writing experience in the field of technology, Chris has written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Reader's Digest, IDG's PCWorld, Digital Trends, and MakeUseOf. Chris has personally written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times-and that's just here at How-To Geek. Drives try to be "smart", and there's not always a way to ensure all bits of a file were overwritten instead of being scattered over the drive.Ĭhris Hoffman is the former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. This isn't necessarily true, and it's more complicated than that.)Įven modern mechanical drives aren't guaranteed to work properly with secure file deletion tools thanks to file-caching technology. (The conventional wisdom is that, with TRIM enabled, the SSD will automatically delete its data when you delete the file. Secure delete tools just don't work reliably with solid-state drives. The file will appear to be deleted, but its data may still be lurking around somewhere on the drive. A secure delete tool can tell an SSD to overwrite a file with junk data, but the SSD controls where that junk data is written to. ![]() Deleting a file will result in a "TRIM" command being sent, and the SSD may eventually remove the data during garbage collection. With modern solid-state drives, the drive's firmware scatters a file's data across the drive. Unfortunately, there's a bigger problem with modern drives. If you have sensitive data - for example, business documents, financial information, or your tax returns - you might worry about someone recovering them from a hard drive or removable storage device.īut, let's say you can solve that problem. This is still possible on USB flash drives and SD cards, too. But that file's data was still sitting on the hard drive, and file-recovery tools could scan a hard disk for deleted files and recover them. The operating system would mark the file as deleted, and the data would eventually be overwritten. Traditionally, deleting a file from a mechanical hard drive didn't actually delete that file's contents. Related: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered, and How You Can Prevent It On a fully encrypted disk, both deleted and undeleted files are protected. Rather than relying on these sorts of bandaid file-deletion solutions, you should rely on full-disk encryption. SDeleteGUI is a tool that's worth the try if you're looking to dispose of some files, folders, and even drives, for good.The problem with "secure delete" and "secure empty trash" is that it provides a false sense of security. The program can be a little fickle with it, as the option only appeared when right-clicking folders. There's also an option to register the program's secure deletion function within your Windows context menu, which enables you to securely erase files without even requiring the program to be running. In addition, it's possible to choose your preferred number of overwrite passes: the more, the less recoverable your data. Clean entire drives and choose the number of passesĪside from being able to erase files and folders, users can also choose to wipe an entire drive to clean free space and ensure that everything stays deleted for good. When it comes to disposing of one of multiple files and folders, the process is handled nearly instantaneously, so there should be hardly any waiting around. The interface itself can best be described as practical, as what you see is what you get. Regardless, after launching the program, you're free to go ahead and select the files you wish to delete from your drives permanently. It would have been nice for it to have been packaged with the tool. It should be noted that the program requires users to have the SDelete utility executable somewhere on their computer, and won't work without it. As such, users of all kinds should be able to navigate through this interface to begin securely deleting any files they wish. The program comes in the form of a graphical user interface for the reliable SDelete solution, which is a CLI tool. It's a program that handles the file deletion process for you, and does so in a manner that prevents the respective data from being recoverable. If you're looking to securely erase some files, folders, or even entire disks, then SDeleteGUI might be of use. Permanent deletion only happens after some time, typically after multiple write operations to the respective drive - but your mileage may vary. What this deletion process does is make the respective files out of reach and inaccessible. As most of us may know, deleting files doesn't mean disposing of them permanently, even after emptying your recycle bin.
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