In Windows system, if you’ve accidentally deleted an important file, it is still possible to recover it back as long as you don’t install any software or copy any new files on the drive that you want to recover. When a file is deleted from Windows, it is not really deleted. Windows only marks it as deleted and freeing the space that was previously being used by the file. That’s why your hard disk free space will increase when you delete files from your computer.
Previously I’ve written an article on 10 free tools that you can use to recover data. Data recovery works (I will show you) if it is not being overwritten. So if you have a sensitive file that cannot let anyone know, I will show you how to permanently delete the file from your computer to prevent it from being recovered.
UltraShredder is a standalone, USB portable file shredder which deletes sensitive files by overwriting them with random characters, saving it to disk each time, and then bypasses the recycle bin, thus acting as your personal, portable file shredder. If the file were to be recovered by a data recovery program, they would only be able to see unintelligible characters on disk where the file used to be. The program is a great tool to destroy sensitive data, and is very small with a minute memory footprint, and makes no changes to your system whatsoever.
Let’s do a test. I will copy a 3.5MB PDF file to my USB flash drive. Delete it and then use a data recovery to try to recover the deleted PDF file. If the PDF file is able to recover, I will again copy the PDF file to USB flash drive, delete it using UltraShredder, and try recovering the PDF file again.
1. A ddd.pdf file with the file size of 3507KB has been copied to my (F:) USB flash drive.
2. I deleted ddd.pdf file from USB flash drive and then use Recuva to try to search for any deleted files. It is able to find _DD.PDF with the filesize 3506KB and in excellent state. I recovered the PDF file, save it to my desktop and the PDF file was able to open. This proofs that data recovery works.
3. Now I copy ddd.pdf file again to my F: drive, ran UltraShredder and added the PDF file to the program. I use the default number of Shreds which is (2) and click the Shred! button. A few seconds later, UltraShredder reports that it has finished shredding.
4. The ddd.pdf file can no longer be seen in the F drive. I will try to see if I can recover the PDF file with Recuva. Ran a scan, it shows that there is 2 _DD.PDF file with an “Unrecoverable” state. It also has a comment that says “This file is overwritten with F:eeeee.eeee”. I checked both of the file, click the Recover button but the files are not recovered.
From the test above, I can conclude that UltraShredder is a solid way of securely deleting files and preventing anyone from recovering it back. If you search around, there are lots of free software that can permanently delete your files to prevent it from being recovered. I am sure they all can work as it is described and might be even better than UltraShredder. I just needed something simple that can do the job. Final note, UltraShredder doesn’t support shredding folders but can shred multiple files.
Hey i just want to point out that i deleted word documents and they all were on a flash drive.well i downb loaded a program by diskinternals.com word document recover program,and guess what it found every last one of it in the trial program..my concern is how in the world do i delete it permently.. just so you know diskinternals.com is awesome.i have used sevral of there programs..
ThanKS
you are doing such a great work thanks for your information, i wana wish you best of luck
regards
mz mirza
i have an apple labtop that someone recently permenately deleted all my files, documents, graphic documents, and photos, is there anyway to get them back? I dont know how they were removed. Any help please!
Here is a techie question for ray / all:
I notice newer SATA hard drives, under sata capabilites list such as from software as hard disk sentinel, show that the disk has hardware secure erase capability.
I have not tried this, as I do not want to wipe disk at the moment!
My question is – how do you use the hardware level secure erase, and is it good / presumably also a lot faster than software secure erase?
Any experience anyone?!
Keep up the knowledge
bovine
I don’t have a special reason why I select UltraShredder. That’s why in the article I mentioned that there are lots, really a lot of free permanent file remover. This is just one of the test I did to proof that file recovery works and file shredding works too.
We’re no experts in this field, so we can’t really tell if the FBI or CIA has technology to recover permanently deleted files. What we are doing is good enough to prevent most of advance IT people from recovering our sensitive files.
“(unless the FBI or KGB is after you, hehe)”
You never know >.>
Anyway, thanks for sharing Raymond ^^
Sorry, this time I do not get the topic of this thread :(
There are many programs in the category of \’Secure File Deletion\” why talk only about UltraShredder?
One of the most famous one, for example, is Eraser, albeit the new version is a step back and I am using old version.
To get full wipe of data they say you need 35 overwrites with different patterns. There is also the USA DoD specifications. I think for most people one wipe with random data is enough. (unless the FBI or KGB is after you, hehe)
BTW, I find Recuva to be a very basic and unreliable program to recover deleted data. It is fast but cannot find the many files other program might find. I like more GetDataBack, but there are others. Recuva has also very bad search capability, so if you need to find one or 2 files it take a long time.
Eraser is an alternative, and it’s free:
heidi.ie/node/6
been using it for a year now, works fine.
Hi Ray,
I\’ve accidently formatted my external hard drive when reinstalling win xp thinking that is part of the hdd partitions.. Any recommendations of any prog that I can completely recover my impt datas?
Many thanks bro.
that rising AV that u recommend also got file shredder, is it as powerful like this shredder and the other shredder? if yes no need for us use other application for shredding files…
thanks
Can you test this one it’s just 9kb?
baliganikhil.googlepages.com/shredder
we can shred the files using spybot and c cleaner.
Ray, is it possible to permanently shred those files with recoverable state after deletion?
Thanks!
Thanks Raymond.
There’s an option like this to erase data in C Cleaner also.
Shift + delete is the same thing as moving the file to recycle bin and empty it.
If you used shift + delete, chance of recovering is also between 10-30%. if im not mistaken, only few strong recovery software can find back the delete files.
thanks raymond, kindly let me know any softwares in chemistry