Computer file shredder (electronic) recommendation
 

What do you computer gurus recommend for a file shredder? I am looking for a tool that sanitizes the entire drive (all the unused / deleted space), not just the files that are deleted after install of the tool.

Thanks!

George

Hi George:

I am not a guru but I looked for one of these a while back and found a progam called SDelete. It downloaded as a Zip file. It overwirites the blanks spaces as many or few times as you wish.

Are you donating/selling/giving the computer away?

I'd go buy a new hard drive and keep the old one.

Thanks SM - New HD isn't an option this time - that's what I usually do.

George

CCleaner has an option to wipe out free space with different types of security settings. It is probably my favorite application.

Here is another alternative...

http://content.artofmanliness.com/up...rip_hammer.jpg

This?

Thanks!

CCleaner - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download

We use Dban and Killdisk at my work.

Ouch - those are nuke tools. I am trying to keep everything intact and just wipe the unused portions.

Thanks!

George

Oops! I misunderstood.

I use CCleaner as well. Be advised that a multi-pass wipe can take a long, long time.

See, as long as you don't nuke the disk you will have electronic traces in the OS itself. Might as well simply defrag your disk after you delete a file, it's probably just as effective as any other tool.

For whole drive, dban

For individual files, shred

Used cclean and it worked well. Of course I did not try to recover files, but it will be fine for what I tried to do. In addition to the file sweeping option it also nicely goes over any personal stuff in browsers / cookies.

Thanks guys!

George

Turning in company equipment I assume?

Worked at a place that forced me to use a POS Dell laptop.

Tossed Parallels onto my MacBook, cloned the Dell to it complete with all the shackles installed by IT.

Threw the Dell into a drawer, locked it and forgot about it.

Every time they pushed some patch that I did not want I just rolled back the snapshot.

They had no idea.

When it came time to turn in the co issued box it was squeaky clean.

The irony is at the time it was the largest provider of enterprise level security products.