More of our lives that were previously “secure” as paper files are becoming digital files, which means the possibilities for data breaches of the above information have gone up.
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Personal files that could be incriminating or simply shouldn’t be publicized due to their private nature.However, many people have a very good reason for needing to really delete their files or use a file shredder. This may be fine when you simply realize that, say, this new rock-and-roll opera you are writing isn’t working out. Even more people feel that they are adequately deleted when they empty the trash and can no longer locate those files themselves. And some people even go one step further to utilize a free file shredder. However, a recent article I read said that in a particular data recovery lab (where labs, researchers, time, and money are not an object) were able to recover a small portion of data from a piece of a smashed drive platter the size of a pea.Many people assume that their files are already safely destroyed when they put them into the “trash” icon on a computer desktop. Just Google for a 'drive eraser' or 'drive wiper') then destroy it with a hammer. Yes, SSD's and even USB flash drives can be wiped.Īnyway, I hope that helps answer what you were asking about.ĮDIT: If you intend to discard an old drive on which bank, credit card, taxes, or any other data you wouldn't want someone to dig out of the trash and run a data recovery program on, it's best to do a whole drive wipe (note that the programs that will wipe an entire drive are sometimes different than the ones used to wipe files. Plus that many passes can be extremely time consuming depending on what you're wiping. Note that the Department of Defense says 3 passes is enough to wipe sensitive goverment data. So as you can see, the 35 passes you mentioned are way, way, way overkill for a home user just wanting to make a file or files unrecoverable. It consists of 3 passes of 0's, 1's, then random data then verifies that all 3 passes were indeed written. However, what the name of the scheme is doesn't matter much, they basically determine the number of passes and what the passes consist of as they're overwriting the file or files you want gone.īy what they 'consist of' I mean that they overwrite with 0's, 1's, or random data.ġ) The 'Peter Gutmann' method (aka just 'Gutmann') consists of 35 passes with random data.Ģ) The VSITR wipe pattern method consists of 7 passes with alternating 0's and 1's then randoms characters for the last pass.ģ) The DoD 5220.22-M Wipe Method was developed by the US Government and the Department of Defense. Each scheme was put together by individuals, companies, governments, etc. If you've read up much since you posted here, you know by now that there are data destruction "schemes".
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File Shredder is pretty good but I prefer Eraser because it has plenty of features to select when, where, and what you want shredded/wiped.