When you mention the word ‘security’ to most people, they will immediately think of something like an Antivirus or Firewall. And of course, this is correct and an essential part of keeping you secure while online. There are however, many other forms of security connected with computing that people should be aware of. One of these is making sure important or private files and data on the system is protected. This is usually handled by software that encrypts the files keeping your most valuable data safe. An area that does often get overlooked by lots of users though, is when they delete data and think that’s ok, it’s gone and I’m safe.
A lot of reasonably experienced users will know that when you delete a file, it isn’t actually completely gone from the system and can often be recovered with undelete software like Recuva or Wise Data Recovery. This is especially true if you are giving an old system away or selling it because the new owner could easily recover data you thought was gone, posing a major security risk. The number of people I have seen getting rid of their old system but have not wiped or done anything at all about what’s currently on it, including not even removing their personal files, is quite shocking. Even a quick format and reinstall in that situation doesn’t mean all the old data is completely safe from being recovered by others. The same thing applies to external storage media like USB sticks or memory cards, and these are perhaps more important as they are far more likely to change hands than internal devices.
What you can do is make sure that before a hard drive or USB stick goes to somebody else, or when you are deleting files off your current system that are in any way important, all this invisible but not really gone data is completely erased so it can never be recovered. Hardwipe is one such program that can erase files, folders or whole drives using a variety of techniques in such a way that when the data’s gone, it’s gone for good and therefore increasing security. Hardwipe is freeware and can also be integrated into the Windows Explorer right click context menu as well as being able to sanitize the unused drive space, which is useful to erase the old deleted data but keep all current files in tact.
Simply download and install the program, Administrator privileges will be asked for only when required, which is usually when you want to wipe internal drives. Removable media usually doesn’t need to ask.
The interface itself is pretty clean and easy to understand, with the different erase modes down the left. The ‘Throttle’ buttons are a useful feature as choosing the ‘Automatic’ option causes the wipe process to be slowed down if the program detects mouse or keyboard activity or the application is not in the foreground. A good thing to have if you are using this program in the background so it won’t affect other applications in use. Various throttle settings like whether it affects internal disks only and the inactivity timeout can be altered in the options.
Clicking the ‘Wipe files’ function will bring up a requester where you can multi select files and folders using control or shift click. ‘Wipe Drive’ and ‘Clean Space’ will show the same requester but you get to select the drive to be erased. Multiple volumes can be selected.
You can choose which erase method is to be used in the dropdown box. There is a choice of six ranging from a simple one pass zero byte fill right up to the 35 pass Gutmann method. For the most part it is recommended to use either a one pass random byte fill or the two pass ‘GOST R 50739-95’ which uses both a single pass zero fill and then a single pass random fill. There is actually a difference between standard hard drives and SSD’s or USB devices regarding the method to use. HDD’s generally only require the single random fill to make the data unreadable whereas digital storage media needs a bit more sanitizing. The Two pass ‘GOST R 50739-95’ or three pass ‘DOD 5220.22-M’ would provide the best balance between security and speed for an SSD or USB pen stick.
The other options in the main window are a dropdown box to log off or power off the machine when the program has finished, and a log button will show the log window where you can track the erase process and check any errors or warnings. The ‘Verification Pass’ tick box will verify that the erase has been successful.
A couple of other options available include emptying the recycle bin before erasing, turning on or off various warning massages, enabling the context menu and choosing the default erase method.
Right clicking a file in Explorer will show a ‘Wipe Files’ option which will bring up the main window for choosing the wipe options. There’s also quick access to the options window via a sub menu.
When you click on ‘Start Wipe’ there will be a warning if any data is to be erased and then the process will begin. If it is going to take a bit of time, there will be a display of progress, speed and time remaining.
If there was one thing I would like to see, it’s the introduction of a standalone portable version. Would be a great secure erase utility for the USB toolkit without resorting to something like Cameyo or Thinapp.
Compatible with Windows XP SP2+, Vista and Win 7 32bit and 64bit.