Purge your Hard Drive

When you delete a file, the file is not deleted! When you remove it from the Recycle Bin, the file is still not deleted! The contents of the file are still on your hard drive. All the file system does is "release" the space for future use. Even formatting your hard drive will not remove the contents. You can do something about it though. There are programs that will purge your hard drive. Depending on the program, you can purge one file at a time, one folder at a time, all the empty space, or the whole enchilada.

The best way to purge your hard drive is to delete all the sensitive files and then purge all the empty space. It's good practice to keep your files and hard drive cleaned anyway. You never know when someone might have access to your computer. For example, a guest or repairman. What about a dead hard drive? You may not want to just throw it away, because data can be recovered from most dead drives. Fred Langa has some ideas to prevent it.

There is a much better alternative: Encrypt all your sensitive files as you go. That way there is very little accessible sensitive data on your computer. There will be some scraps (debris) left over from just using the data, so purging the hard drive is still a good idea when you dispose of it. I have used both SafeHouse and TrueCrypt. They both work flawlessly. TrueCrypt is a little less confusing to use and it is free.

Programs to purge with

http://www.necrocosm.com/ -- NecroFile is a little program that I use. It's simple, but the user interface is so minimal that it's puzzling to figure out how to use it at first. Once you've learned, it's easy. NecroFile can purge the empty space on your drive(s), delete and purge individual files, and delete and purge individual folders.

http://www.killdisk.com/ -- KillDisk is a program that you put on a bootable floppy, and then boot your computer. I imagine a bootable CD would work as well. KillDisk purges everything on your hard drive. That's OK if you have the original Windows or recovery disk to reinstall the system software with.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/ -- "Darik's Boot and Nuke" is very similar to KillDisk and wipes everything off the drive.

http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/index.html -- Autoclave is very similar to KillDisk and purges everything.

Purge your Hard Drive

Programs to purge with

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