Author Topic: File Shredder  (Read 12050 times)

avantuser1114

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File Shredder
« on: March 23, 2013, 07:50:46 »
There quite a lot of tools that are capable of doing this but I think it's more comfortable if you won't need other than what you've been using for ordinary deletes. An additional option in the delete dialog for shredding/wiping files would be great. Hope this would be considered.

Mathias (Author)

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Re: File Shredder
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2013, 13:16:46 »
I was planing something like that. But the problem with file shredding and modern file system is that just overwrite the location that the file currently is located is NOT safe. and that will not guarantee that the file is gone. And if you have a SSD it will not work since it will relocated sectors by it self. So you can not overwrite the exact same sectors.

I would require that the user turn off a lot of the option in Windows to be able to guarantee that the file will be gone.
Modern filesystems can creates shadows copies of files when they are modified so that older versions of the files can be recover (Like the previous version feature in Windows 7)
And also when restore points are created sometimes files are hiddenly backuped . and if you resave the file in question. Then the old version might still exists on the drive.
And the content of the file can also have been stored in the page file (swap file) when it was loaded by a program.
So to be totally safe one need to turn off VSS and restore point system in windows. also Page File. or just a temporary page file that is delete on logoff..
(Removing pagefile completely is not recommended. )
And if the file have been re-saved anytime then all the free space on the drive also would need to be overwritten to safely remove it.

It is so much easier just to encrypt the entire drive instead.