#Best file shredder for windows software

Defragmentationĭefragmenting data on your hard drive causes the data to move about so that fragmented files become consolidated. Probably the most notorious place to find copies of files is in the swap or page files in some operating systems. Once the application is finished with the file sometimes it is deleted, but sometimes it can be retained for future use or reference. Many applications create temporary copies of files as they are being worked on, printed, e-mailed, etc. There are a number of reasons why file shredder utilities can fail to remove files completely and sometimes they are no better than the standard delete.

#Best file shredder for windows software

I think that a lot of people put too much faith in file shredding software to completely remove files believing that once it has been done their files are no longer recoverable. To make file recovery more difficult most file shredders will have the option of overwriting files numerous times with different patterns of data to further mask the original information. By analysing the analogue value of the stored data rather than the digital value the original data can potentially be recovered. This is the basis of how some of the more advanced methods of data recovery work. Although the data was overwritten by zeroes the process is never 100% efficient. This would produce something similar to this:Īs you can see there are residual traces of the original data present. Now suppose that the data is shredded using the simple method of overwriting data with zeroes. After data is written to it the diagram could then look like this: The above diagram represents a small section of hard drive that has never had any information stored on it before.

As a very basic illustration on how this works have a look at the example below:

Advanced methods of retrieving deleted or overwritten data analyse the magnetic patterns on a hard drive and attempt to reconstruct what data was there previously.

How this data is recorded onto a storage medium such as a hard drive is generally analogue in nature so values in between ‘zero’ and ‘one’ are possible. Recovering Shredded Dataĭata on a computer is stored as digital information meaning that the data is stored as either zeroes or ones. However, getting rid of your data completely is not quite as simple as that and it is still quite possible to recover it. If someone was to look at the raw data after this all they would see are values of zero instead of the original contents of the file. One of the most basic methods is to completely overwrite the file with bit values of zero. Enter The Shredder!įile shredders work by overwriting the file first before carrying out the actual delete.

internet cache and personal documents) and because of this many employ a type of software known as a file shredder. People are becoming more aware of the sensitivity of certain files on their computer (e.g. This makes recovery of deleted data a relatively easy task and there are numerous tools available on the internet that can accomplish this. Looking at the raw data on a hard drive would reveal that the essence of the file is still there, at least until it is overwritten by new data. When a file is deleted, only the information that makes the file visible to the operating system is removed. This article was originally published in issue 51 of The Crypt Mag Introduction