Wipe file and clear disk space

Today million people are working in offices on million computers. Now it’s no wonder, as a few years ago, having PC at home. You can play the games, read articles, listen to the music, browse Internet pages. And all of these are only files.

Download evaluation version of QuickWiper from www.quickwiper.com 

Simple look at file system

All kinds of information is stored in computers as a files. Each file takes some place on a hard disk. And the first (and main for our issue) problem is you never know where it’s placed, and how much disk space it occupy.

Operating system acts with this in it’s own way. To save file on a hard disk it takes any free space.

It is to note hard disk is divided for logical parts of definite sizes. Smallest of it is named cluster. So, OS is taking as many number of clusters or sectors allocated to file as needed to it. The area of disk space provided, is always larger than the file itself. Also it may occur file will be parted and placed in various clusters. Deleting a file alone, leaves a space which can contain sensitive data. There are a number of ways in which this sensitive data can be deposited without a user knowing it.  

Also, every time a file is updated or "saved", new copies are created and written wherever there is sufficient space. Applications can create huge numbers of such files. When a file is eventually deleted, only the last image is accounted for. All other images appearing as free disk space, unseen, unsuspected. That's why undelete programs are possible.

Let’s try to wipe file

Well, let’s imagine you need to delete some file. You press ‘Del’ (or ‘Shift&Del’ to erase file without Recycle Bin going in). OK, your file is disappearing from hard disk!

However, a this traditional method for deleting a file from permanent storage space is just to delete the pointer contained in the file directory that points to the information blocks comprising the file. The actual contents of the information is left untouched. Using a utility program, the contents of every block of storage space can be scanned for sensitive information.

More particularly, although storage space is freed up for other uses, the file's data content is left untouched until the storage space is actually used for another file storage. This is inherently dangerous because the user believes the data is gone, yet a skilled intruder can use powerful utility tools to scan for these deleted files.

Use special wiping utility to really clear disk space

Another conventional method of file deletion requires a user to overwrite 0's and 1's over the entire data file as to remove any magnetic remnants of the removed information. As user can’t do it by yourself it would do special program, for example such as QuickWiper.

The erasure is performed by using the encryption algorithm so that the contents of the file cannot be retrieved by other users after the erasure. When the secure wiping method is used, no utility program can recover any information from the deleted file. To an intruder, the storage space is encrypted to look like random bits. Therefore, no information can be retrieved nor derived from the encrypted, deleted file.

Well, what’s the result? Using wiping program we may be calm for high level of safety of securely deleted data. No one, even yourself, can recover sensitive information. It would be a great trouble to do it by any recovery utility, no doubt, no variants. However, if you are a little paranoid, read article below.

Related articles:

• Points on information storage and security. At present IT-corporations invests millions of dollar in development of information security techniques. But the only problem is researching how to make public information accessible to all users, and confidential data accessible only to whom it’s intended.

• Short review on non-software methods of destruction of the information on hard drives. Sometimes, when the highest reliability is needed, it’s using mechanical and other methods of destruction of the information, when HDD is breaking as oneself.

• Wipe file and clear disk space. All kinds of information is stored in computers as a files. Each file takes some place on a hard disk. And the first (and main for our issue) problem is you never know where it’s placed, and how much disk space it occupy.

• Disk space: free doesn’t mean blank. Let’s repeat, when you delete sensitive files from a disk on your computer, Windows does not erase the contents of these files from the disk - it only deletes 'references' to these files from file system tables. Contents of the deleted file continue to be stored on the disk space and can be easily recovered using any unerasing utility.