When we delete the files from our computers, do you think these files are permanently deleted? Pressing the delete button does not confirm that these files are deleted and there is no reason to believe it. Because you must have experienced undoing such commands can recover the files. Basically deleted files are only marked as deleted and removed from indexing of the file system. While you are the only one using your laptop or desktop computer system, you should be less tensed while deleting the files because you can always recover such files. You might believe that if you use Shift + Delete, you are permanently deleting the files without any recovery option, right! But it’s not completely true. There are many tools in market today, that can recover even Shift + deleted files from the system. And this can become very dangerous when you are throwing off your old harddisk or your colleagues or friends using your computer system. Your private files and data might be exposed to others and you are risking away your privacy.
Well, it’s just like cleaning the floor but it’s not wiped clean. It cannot be still germ free till you wipe it clean with disinfectants. Same thing I can say about deleting the files from your disk, till the time you don’t wipe disk, you cannot guarantee non-recovery of such deleted files.
Today, File shredder is used for wiping the deleted files clean from the hard disk. It can do so completely and in a secure way so you are not at risk by any chance. It’s interesting to know how File Shredders can do that! Have you seen someone coloring the walls with white colour - it looks complete white initially right? Now another layer of yellow color, then green, then blue, then red - at the end can you tell me what was the original color? Exactly you cannot - and in the same fashion File Shredder writes over and over again on deleted files so it cannot be recognized what the original file was ever.
As you know now, the deleted files are not removed physically from the disk and only the linking is removed to the specific file. Eventually the original content remains as it is on the deleted files - does not matter where on the disk. I do maintain lot of my important financial information on my computer, and I simply cannot afford someone recovering the deleted files from my system, so it’s kind of inevitable for me to use it.
At a larger scale, many companies would like to retain their confidential information “only” with them than anyone else. Probably such guys better chose to wipe off their disks using these file shredders, don’t you think so? Why to compromise your privacy and security when you have such tools handy in market.
Government bodies, hospital or private sectors that deals with highly confidential information on their clients/partners are amongst who cannot afford to have their information leaked out. You will expect them to go through some strict procedures of file shredding and wiping.
I got all this information at wipe-disk-with-file-shredder.com while searching for file shredder applications. This site has listed down file shredder applications with some useful details. Well, that helped me to know what all applications are available for this purpose, where and at what prices… useful information isn’t it!
After quickly going through the website, I am aware of some security vocabulary people use. For ex: “Number of Passes” - the number of times file shredder will overwrite information.
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Sometimes it is very important to protect sensitive data. Deleted data can be easily recovered using hard-disk tools. Thank you for sharing some great file shredders available out there.
I used a file-shredder which is in-build within Spybot - Search and Destroy software. It is time-consuming, and unless you have to REALLY remove some data permanently by making it unreadable, you won’t be needing it any time soon…