ricog sent me some information on a neat free utility called Eraser. In a nutshell, it completely overwrites files or data on your hard drive (at your request, of course) so that it cannot be recovered by anyone, even data recovery specialists. This is a great way to get rid of sensitive data that you want to make sure is gone forever.

If you want to erase your entire hard drive, then read this article instead.

Eraser can be downloaded from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php.

ricog's instructions follow:

The program I would reccommend is called Eraser. I have attached the files for it. I selected it because:

1. Can use the Gutman method for both file and free space.
2. Ther user can enable "swap" space clearing at shutdown. Can also schedule secure erases which will allow us to eliminate traces of alternate data streams if they follow the below procedure.
3. Good interface. Integrates with windows well.

Installation/Scenario for use.

1. Download Eraser -- the latest version is 5.7, called "eraser57.zip".
2. Unzip files in "eraser57.zip" to temporary folder - c:/temp/eraser
3. Browse to temporary folder -c:/temp/eraser - run setup.exe - accept defaults and install to c:/program files/eraser
4. Reboot
5. Run Eraser, go to Edit Menu, Preferences, General.
6. Under Paging file, choose "Enable clearing . . ." Click OK.
7. Go to Edit Menu, Preferences, Erasing, Unused Disk Space. Click on Gutman, Click OK.
8. Click On Scheduler, Choose the File menu, New Task.
9. Make sure "Unused space is Selected" then choose "Local Hard Drives" (If they want to get Really fancy they can start doing things like scheduling the deletion of their cookies and history every day before the wiping of free space)
10. Click on Schedule, and assign an appropriate Schedule (like at 12 Midnight.) Click OK.
11. Exit Program.

Scenario: This is for a mildly paranoid person and should satisfy their needs.
For example they have a document in C:/document/ called foo.doc that they want GONE.

1. Find the document in explorer, right click, choose erase.
2. Click OK.
3. Before leaving work reboot computer. (this is necessary to clear that blasted swap file)
4. Over night free space ( and all swap file traces of the file) will be cleared.

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