Secure File Deletion: How You Can Permanently Erase Files

You’ve deleted a file. That’s the end of that file. It’s gone forever, isn’t it?

Err. No. It’s still there.

You see, computers - and especially computer programmers - take short cuts. And one of the short cuts is that they don’t actually delete a file when you click delete. Sometimes, this is useful because it means you can undelete a file that you’ve accidentally deleted.

But what can you do if you want to completely obliterate all traces of a file? Maybe you’re passing your old PC onto someone else and you’d rather the new owner had no chance of finding out all of your passwords and logins. Maybe you had some confidential documents from your company and you want to make sure that no-one else gets access to them. Maybe it’s some email correspondence you don’t want anyone else to get hold of.

Whatever the reason, just hitting the delete button isn’t good enough.

Unless you are 100% certain that your computer will only ever be used by you and you alone, you need to make sure that the files you want deleted actually get removed totally.

Far and away the best way to do this is by using a software program. Unless you repeatedly format your hard drive and then splinter it into thousands of little pieces, there’s no way you can do this on your own.

The good news is you can download some affordable software that will give you the same kind of file security the government would expect to use.

It will randomly write data to the area on your hard disk your file used to occupy. Not just a couple times (that wouldn’t be foolproof) but time after time after time. Once it’s done it’s job, not even the NSA’s high powered computers would have the slightest clue about the file’s contents.

So if you’ve got files you want to delete forever, you should download this inexpensive software!