spherebox

The only way to ensure that deleted files, as well as files that you encrypt with EFS, are safe from recovery is to use a secure delete application. There are numerous softwares to securely delete sensitive files off your hard drive. In this tutorial we will be using SDelete (by previously sysinternal) which can be downloaded from here. It is a command line application which makes it ideal for creating batch files.

This would be a good setup for those who are working with sensitive data and don’t want to wait for a zero-fill reformat to destroy those sensitive data files. Save a batch file on your desktop right next to your recycling bin, so you can now just drag and drop sensitive files onto the batch file icon to shred them digitally. Use the normal Recycle Bin for file you don’t wanna shred. For those with paws instead of hands I advise caution.

Download, extract and save SDelete.exe to your c:\windows\system32

Open a new notepad and key in the following…

@echo off
echo . --- W A R N I N G ---
echo .
echo .the file(s)/folders(s) will be shredded! Are you sure?
echo .
echo . use CTRL-C to abort or...
echo .
pause
sdelete -p 4 -s %1
pause

and save it as a *.bat file on your desktop. As mentioned earlier, you can now just drag and drop sensitive files onto the batch file icon to shred them digitally.

Please note that shredding digital files, like it’s real world equivalent isn’t a 100% process. As in the real world where people can use a sellotape to paste back the shredded strings and reconstruction the original documents, completely removing traces of the file in all operating systems is similarly unlikely. In NTFS, it is extremely likely that copies of the target file will be made elsewhere in the volume. Also, if there is anything in the I/O stack performing write coalescing, then the file you’re trying to securely erase may only be overwritten on the physical disk once and not x number of times as suppose to be done by the shredding application.