An Easy-to-use and user-friendly program applies to everyday use. Use Advanced US Dod 5220.22-M erasure method. When run from outside Windows, you can use this program to destroy a hard drive that has any operating system installed to it. The shredded files cannot be recovered by any data recovery software. CBL Data Shredder is an easy-to-use free data destruction program that can be run from both inside and outside Windows, making it a very versatile program. It's probably quicker to just copy a big file over the sensitive file, but safer to clear unallocated space. Securely erase and shred sensitive files, folders and free disk space from your PC. This can take a long time if you are overwriting a large space.
Data that is not allocated to files or folders will be overwritten.
Specify the drive and the folder that identifies the volume that contains the deleted data that you want to overwrite. Type cipher /w: driveletter:\ foldername, and then press ENTER.Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then press ENTER.You could delete the file and then use cipher: So just copying a sufficiently large but innocuous file over the top will suffice. It doesn't matter what you overwrite it with. Statements to the contrary have been thoroughly debunked long ago. You don't need to overwrite a file more than once. Shred only overwrites a file, it doesn't seek out fragments and copies of the data in unallocated disk space (caused by editing, etc.). I infer that either there isn't one as standard (and I've never heard of one) or (less likely?) that the manufacturer added some unnecessary bloatware without the usual sliver of justification. I recently purchased a new PC with Windows 7, and the manufacturer bundled a third party shredder application.