Deleting files in Windows is very easy. You can select the files or folder that you want to delete, right-click on them and select Delete from the context-menu. Other ways include selecting files and pressing the Delete key on your keyboard, using PowerShell or cmd.exe console to give erase commands etc.
But simple deletion of files is not enough to dispose of all of your private or secret files as file deletion through Windows File Explorer just removes their entry from the file table of the file system. Anyone using a file recovery tool can recover all of your deleted files if they have not been overwritten later on. As these file recovery tools are abundant on the internet, the recovery task becomes very easy.
Secure Eraser is a file shredding program with advanced features. It can be used to delete files from your hard drive without leaving any possibility of recovery. You can use it to completely destroy your private data so that nobody else can recover it. Secure Eraser is free for personal use.
It comes with three specialized secure deletion tools – for secure deletion of files/folders, for secure deletion of drives/partitions and for secure wiping of the free space. The first tool is for securely erasing of individual file, a group of files or folders. The second tool is for securely erasing an entire partition or hard drive. And the last tool can wipe the free space that might contain data belonging to previously erased files.
In all cases, it wipes the MFT clean so that no references to deleted files can be found. For secure erasing you can select many different overwriting methods – from low security to the highest level of security. For higher levels of security, it overwrites the file many more number of times.
The program works efficiently and removes the deleted files entries from MFT on NTFS formatted drives. We tried to find deleted files using Recuva after securely erasing them with Secure Eraser, but we were unsuccessful. It uses minimal system resources and does not slow down the computer.
You can download Secure Eraser from https://www.ascomp.de/en/products/show/product/secureeraser/.