Secure Erase
Overview
When you delete files from Windows, they are not really deleted from the hard disk. Windows always saves a backup of the file to disk. These backup files are not displayed in Explorer and you can not access them. With Secure Erase, you can safely delete files, folders, and empty areas of your hard disk. You can also delete improperly removed files, which are not deleted when emptying Recycle Bin via Windows. Deleted objects are first overwritten several times and then deleted, so that they can not be restored.
Selecting a secure erase method
- Select a secure method. By default, is the Overwrite with random numbers method is selected.
- The selected method will be used by Secure Erase.
Deleting individual files securely
- Right-click a file in Windows Explorer.
- Select Secure delete from the context menu.
Emptying the Recycle Bin securely
- Click Empty Recycle Bin in the Secure Erase tab
- OR
- Right-click the Windows Recycle Bin and select Empty Recycle Bin securely.
Deleting temporary directories securely
- Click Remove temporary directory in the Secure Erase tab.
- A dialog asking you whether you want to delete temporary directory. In brackets you can see the path to the directory.
- Click OK to confirm.
Planning secure erase
You can use the Scheduler to automatically execute actions of Secure Erase. You can automatically delete files and directories at certain time. You can also safely delete empty disk sectors. Safely clearing empty sectors cleans up a disk's free space and removes hidden Windows sector backup files.
Creating a task
- Click Create.
- The New task dialog appears.
- In the Name field, enter a task name.
- To delete files and directories, select Secure delete from the Action drop-down menu.
- Select a method in the Secure Erase method menu.
- Click Add file… or Add folder… to define objects for deletion.
- In the Open or in the Browse for folder dialog, select the objects for deletion.
- Click OK to confirm.
- The selected objects appear in the Secure deletion objects list.
- To delete empty sectors of the drives, select Empty sectors secure delete from the Action drop-down menu. Check the hard drives where you want to delete empty sectors.
- Only the free space is cleaned up.
- Enable the check boxed, if needed:
- Empty Recycle Bin securely to delete the contents of the recycle bin
- and
- Delete temporary directories securely to remove the contents of the temporary directories.
- Define a time period or a period for repeating the task.
- Click OK to confirm.
- The dialog closes and the changes are applied. The new task appears in the list of the Scheduler tab.
Editing a task
- Double-click a task OR select an action and click Edit in the toolbar.
- Make changes.
- Confirm with OK.
Disabling a task
- Clear the check box in the Active column.
Deleting a task
- Select a task from the list.
- To select multiple tasks at the same time, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking.
- Click Delete on the toolbar.
- The entry is deleted from the list.