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Here's a true story of a man who wrote a threatening letter to his boss over failure to give him his raise when promised.  After he completed the letter and saved it, he realized the implications of his actions, so he deleted the file.  He thought that was the end of it.  He left for the night.  The next day, he was called into his boss' office, shown the letter, and abruptly fired.  He was shocked.   He thought the letter was deleted.  Apparently, a computer specialist got on his system right after he left the night before, to do some routine maintenance, discovered the letter and printed it out.

What does this teach us?  That we can't assume anything.  That if we have information we don't want others to see, learning the right way to delete files—permanently—is a must. Maybe you’re surfing for a new job on Monster.com from work. Maybe you have financial information that can't be seen by certain people.  Whatever the case, if you share a computer, you run the risk of letting anyone access your private files, even those you thought you deleted.

Be careful.  Don't think just because you send something to the Recycle Bin, and empty it , that it's gone for good.  Far from it.  That’s why there are software programs developed to help you recover lost data and/or delete data forever, making even recovery programs ineffective. There are four popular freeware and shareware programs that do just that: Window Washer 4.0 from Webroot Software, Eradicator from Spytech Software and Design, Disk CleanUp 2000 from Gregory Braun, and BCWipe from Jetico.

The File Removal Process
Why do developers have to create these deletion programs?  To answer this question you need to understand how the operating system works with files and deletes them.  Let’s assume you delete a file and it goes to the Recycle Bin. At this point you may not know it, you can easily retrieve that file by double-clicking the Recycle Bin icon, right-clicking the file, and selecting Restore from the pop-up menu. But what if you already right-clicked the Recycle Bin icon and clicked Empty Recycle Bin? Your trashed files are gone, aren’t they?

No. When you delete a file and empty the trash, the entire file hasn’t been deleted, just the most important piece of it (from the viewpoint of Windows Explorer, at least.) When Windows deletes the file, Windows overwrites the first character or characters in the file name. When a user request a file, the OS searches from address to address in the FAT (file allocation table) to find where the file’s clusters are stored on disk. It then goes to the disk to collect each cluster of information. If the reference to the file isn’t there, FAT cannot retrieve it. That is what happens when files are deleted.  The reference to them is removed. 

In other words, once the file is deleted, the OS now believes the space taken up by the file can be overwritten. But that space isn’t necessarily used right way; sometimes it can remain unused on your system for a long time.  Programs and knowledgeable users can scan through your computer’s guts and recover these files.

Programs written to permanently delete files were created to resolve this dilemma. Not only does it tell the system that it can overwrite the space consumed by a file, it does the overwriting itself, multiple times. The software overwrites deleted data in a random pattern of ones and zeros. There’s even a recommended standard put out by the U.S. Department of Defense (publication: DoD 5200.28-STD) that these programs have to meet or exceed.

Now that you understand how the operating system treats deleted files and how these programs work, let’s discuss some specific software packages.

Window Washer
This shareware program cleans up the tracks left on your computer by Web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, NeoPlanet, AOL, and Opera. It deletes items in the cache, rids your system of cookies, erases the history, deletes e-mail sent to the trash folder, and more.

But the highlight of the program is the Bleach function. Bleach takes your “deleted” files (not just those that originated on the Internet, but any deleted file on your hard drive) and overwrites them with random characters up to 10 times. Bleach works in FAT, FAT32, and NTFS.

The latest version of Window Washer (4.0) includes some enhanced features. Custom Wash lets you choose which files, folders, and Registry entries will be cleaned. Cookie Keeper lets you save preferred settings within a cookie, which is useful if you don’t want to delete all cookies. And more useful features. 

The program can be found at (http://www.webroot.com/washer.htm).   Go there and try a demo of Window Washer. Click the download link at the bottom of the page. If you want to keep the program after 30 days, you will be charged $29.95, which includes technical support and updates for one year.

Eradicator
Eradicator is a file cleaning utility that offers three levels of protection. The first, Low Level Security, overwrites the file with a random byte pattern once and then erases it. The second, High Level Security, overwrites the file three times. The third, Ultra Level Security, repeats the overwriting process 20 times.

The software is easy to use. After downloading and installing, just click the Add File button.  You will be taken to a directory of your hard drive. Just browse through the files and when you locate the one you want to remove, highlight its name and click Open. The file then appears in the Status box. Click the Eradicate button, and a pop-up box informs you that the deleted file is now unrecoverable from your system.

There are two versions available - a free version, which gives you Low Level Security only, and a paid version ($19.95), which entitles you to extra features such as the ability to clear more than one file at a time. A free, downloadable copy is available at the Eradicator Secure Deletion Web page (http://www.spytech-web.com/eradicator.shtml).

Disk CleanUp
The Disk CleanUp 2000 program is another small, handy utility for permanently deleting files. Here’s how it works: It creates a temporary file and adds empty space to this file until the drive’s free space is exhausted. The temporary file is then removed, returning all of the free space on the drive. In the process of creating and expanding this temporary file, data from all previously deleted files will be overwritten.

The shareware is free to try and costs $25 if you decide to keep it. You can download the program from the Disk CleanUp 2000 Web page (http://www.gregorybraun.com/CleanUp.html).

To use the software for best performance, use the File, Options menu command or click the Settings button to display the Disk CleanUp Options property sheet. On the Settings tab, set the Background Priority to High, with a Block Size of 1024KB. Make sure Automatic Block Sizing and NSA File Erasure Method are both turned off.

Windows 98 users may see a warning message that free disk space is low, just before Disk CleanUp completes its operations.  This is normal; you can dismiss it by clicking the Cancel button.

BCWipe
BCWipe gives you many options for permanently deleting files including using the Delete With Wiping command, which lets you delete files using pop-up context menus. In addition, you can wipe out all the files in your Recycle Bin simply by pointing your mouse to the Recycle Bin’s icon and choosing the Wipe Recycle Bin option. Plus, Windows Me users can wipe out contents of special folders.

To find out about its other features or try BCWipe for 30 days, visit Jetico’s Web site (http://www.jetico.com) and click the Download Centre button. After that, a single-user license costs $29.95.

Do yourself a favor and get educated about this subject.  Understand how the operating system works and how it takes care of deleted files.  By knowing this and taking the correct procedures, you can eliminate any embarrassing situations that may arise.

Harry Husted is a freelance writer and author.  His writing projects include ghostwriting, copywriting, web site content, and DTP.  His credits include articles for Internet Day, Internet World, Advertising Today, Advertising Age, L-Advertising, and a host of others. Harry is also an author of three books, Learn How to Repair Computers: Get Certified in 15 Weeks, How to Write Your Way to Millions, and How to Find and Start a Legitimate Home Business. He can be reached by sending email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit his site at http://www.creatingwords.com

This article is copyright (c) 2002 by Harry Husted, and may be reprinted in it's entirety as long as this byline and copyright statement is included.