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Prevent Recovery of Deleted Files From Your Computer

Many people often wonder how they can prevent the recovery of deleted files on their computer.  Not everyone knows this, but when you delete a file on your computer, it is not really deleted.  Instead, the Operating System (for instance, Windows XP) designates the space as able to be written to.  If data is not later written over the space, the data contained on that space can be later read.  This can be disastrous, as anyone can read the files that you thought were deleted.  For instance, if you sell your computer at a garage sale, the person who buys your computer can still find deleted files on your computer, which can reveal personal information.  Therefore, you should use a utility which will “wipe” your hard drive, or at least selected files, so that no one can later recover them.  We will now take a look at two utilities which do exactly that.




If you are selling your old computer, you will want to completely prevent any recovery of any files on your computer.  Most people think that by reformatting your hard drive, that will completely erase all of the data on that drive.  This is not correct!  Ask any computer technician, and they will tell you- reformatting does nothing to the data stored on your hard drive.  Instead, you should use a disk wiping utility, such as Darik's Boot and Nuke.  This utility is available for free, and allows easy disk wiping.  Simply insert the floppy disk or CDROM (once you burn the CD or create the floppy using the instructions included), and Darik's Boot and Nuke will automatically completely wipe all hard disk drives that it finds on your computer.  Darik's Boot and Nuke wipes data using seven passes.  This means that this utility will overwrite your hard drive seven different times, to make sure that all data is completely deleted.  This utility wipes data so well, that it even meets the US Department of Defense's requirements for data deletion.  After you run this utility, you can then safely format your hard drive and re-install Windows.  No one will be able to recover your deleted files!  Darik's Boot and Nuke is available from http://dban.sourceforge.net.
 
If you don't want to completely wipe your hard drive, you can still prevent recovery of deleted files on your computer using a data wipe utility.  Standalone utilities are available which will even run on Windows.  An example of such a utility is Eraser.  Similar to Darik's Book and Nuke, Eraser will perform a multi-pass wipe of selected data files.  Also similar to Darik's Boot and Nuke, Eraser performs a Department of Defense quality wipe of each and every data file that you specify.  In addition, Eraser also offers the ability to password protect the application, preventing unauthorized users of your computer from wiping important data files.  Eraser also supports the ability to wipe the files upon the next system restart, and Eraser can also wipe all of the free space on your hard drive.  Eraser is available for free from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser.
 
Now that you can completely prevent the recovery of removed files on your computer, you will be able to safely give or sell your old computer, and sleep at night better with the knowledge that your deleted files are gone forever.  As long as you use caution with these utilities, they will give you the safety and peace of mind as any other utility that would normally cost at least $30.  After all, a free utility is always a good thing.





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