Are the sensitive data permanently deleted ?

All of us know that every time when we are deleting a file or folder under Microsoft Windows, they are moved in the Recycle Bin folder giving us the chance to restore at a later date the deleted files form there. But after emptying the Recycle Bin ? Well, the files and folders can be restored after that as well, but the procedure is a bit more complicated, must be used some software to recover deleted data, as WinUtilities Free Undelete 3.1 (free) , R-Undelete File Recovery Software 3.5 , Undelete It! 3.17 or other software, there are a plenty on the Internet. The recovery procedure is based on the fact that when a file is deleted in MS Windows, the Operating System only change the file “flag” in files adress table(MFT), making it unusable by the system but the file binary data still  exists on the hard-disk and it will exists until it is overwritten by another file binary data.

The MFT in a NTFS (New Technology File System) volume–which all the modern Windows versions uses, is in a few words a zone on the hard-disk where are stored all the informations about a file or its attributes, including the physical adress on the hard-disk, where the file can be founded by the Operating System when needed.

Even the reformatting procedure does not erase for real the binary data from the hard-disk, only the adress tables of the files, beeing theoretically possible to recover the old files from a formatted hard-disk by reading the drive bit-by bit. More, there is software that claims it can recover a file even if it was overwritten by another, by amplifying the reminiscence of the low-level magnetic fields. It’s like in old and re-re-recorded cassette tapes, where the previously recorded track can be still heard in the backgound of the sound in the new track.

Knowing all this and for preventing sensitive data stolen, it’s obviously we need a good and effective eraser in the case we sell the computer, or our laptop is stolen. Almost anybody can restore old data from a computer, revealing our “secrets”, history,  passwords or accounts credentials.

A software like Eraser(freeware) is what we need, providing for us files erasing with complex algorithms, overwriting them several times, making them completely unrecoverable and giving us the peace of mind. It has a simple and intuitive user interface, a complete task scheduler and support :

Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Eraser is Free software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.

MD5:
87e9bf8ffd65aec2fd6b653ab6cb7abe
SHA-1:
b6949543d505c89f5aab190f7b7b707561d8ec15

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