What is the best Freeware Secure Delete program to choose and?

Question

If you use a secure delete program does this mean that your whole PC is wiped out or can you just select what you want to secure delete? Any help greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

What is it that you want deleted? There are several secure delete programs. When you delete a file in Windows, the file itself is not deleted; rather, Windows removes one character from the file name. The space where the file is saved on the hard drive is marked as available for use. Only when you save another file over it, do you really delete the orginial file. What secure deletion (a.k.a privacy tools) programs do is to write over the "deleted" file over and over again with multiple passes. The result is that it is very hard to piece back the orginial file. The US Department of Defense standard is 3 passes, the National Security Agency standard is 7 passes. There are several free tools. If you want to delete only selected files then CCleaner (a.k.a. Crap Cleaner) is a good choice. It will delete temporary internet files, temporary files, history, cookies and whatever file you want to delete. CCleaner can delete files with up to 7 passes.

If you want to wipe clean an entire hard drive, I highly recommend Heidi's Eraser. Eraser will wipe a hard drive so clean not even the NSA forensic labs can recover anything.

1.CCleaner www.ccleaner.com
2.Eraser http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

If you want more recommendations, just drop me an email. There are several free privacy tools which specialize in certain types of file deletion.

Answer 2

If you just want to delete an occasional file then there are plenty of programs like Cybershredder where you just drag things onto it,
http://www.cylog.org/utils_9.asp

CCleaner is also good. It has a setting in options to securely wipe anything it deletes - and one of the thing it wipes is everything in the Recycle bin.
So that means you could just put things in the Recycle bin as usual and then occasionally run CCleaner to securely wipe the contents - you just have to remember whenever you want to empty your bin to run CCleaner instead of 'Emply Recycle bin' that would to do a normal delete.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

If you want to wipe files that you have already deleted then Restoration has the ability to wipe previously deleted files:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Answer 3

Secure Delete basically means it has no backup, which most files that are placed through the recycle bin, are completely gone. Cnet and Download.com have some good permanent deleters. You pick your file you want to delete and it Securely deletes it(:p), leaving no way for it to be recovered or come back.

Answer 4

You may already have one to delete individual files or folders installed.

Spybot Search and Destroy has one built in.
Select "Mode"- "Advanced" - "Tools" - "Secure Shredder"
You can right click over the white list area to select files/remove files from the list.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html
http://malektips.com/spybot_search_and_destroy_0007.html

Answer 5

Hmm sounds exceptionally undesirable, what you ought to do is make yet another account and replica its folder on your account except you deleted the major one. you ought to purchase a exterior CD-Rom and question once you boot up your pc does it educate a call pronounced as gadget fix? really, Cory

Answer 6

"dban".
Its a boot program, and wipes any disk media it finds, such as multiple drives.
Its will clear everything, operating system and all.

Answer 7

well I'm not sure if it is the BEST but Ad-Aware SE personal is good... It deleted viruses/ bad stuff in my computer...I got it on www.downloads.com

Answer 8

Try these free ones http://www.basicspywaretips.com/spywareremovaltool.html