I will wipe it several more times once Chrome is no longer safe to use. I then used this method to wipe the hard drives – twice on the laptop and 3 times on the desktop. I hid all icons and references to IE and Outlook Express as I will still be letting the grandkids use the desktop occasionally. I’ve spent the better part of the past week deleting/removing tons of stuff off both, sending a lot of things to various Cloud storage places until I get my new laptop set up the way I like. Having read all your newsletters and all the articles on the Web concerning the demise of Windows XP, I installed Chrome on my XP laptop and desktop computer about a month ago as you recommended, (to give them that extra “year of life”). I’m not advising you pollute the environment, by the way. If you want to hide something from them, my advice is to boil the hard drive then take it out to your driveway and pound it with a sledgehammer until it’s flatter than a pancake, then get a metal saw and cut it in four pieces and take the pieces and throw them in different rivers and lakes. It’s not fancy and it doesn’t offer to let you choose how many times you want the free space overwritten (the more times it’s overwritten with gibberish the more difficult it is for someone to recover the data you’ve deleted Notice I said ‘more difficult’- I’m pretty sure that no matter how many times you’ve overwritten the deleted data/free space with no matter what program, someone like the FBI or NSA could surely recover usable data from it. The point of the article wasn’t to promote free space erasing it was to let everyone know that if they did want to erase free space and make deleted files more difficult for someone to recover, Windows already has a built-in program (Cipher) to do that. There are many free space erasers out there - for instance Eraser. I don’t know what EAM clean application is. So it’s best to do this when you’re not actively using your computer. Also, closing all open applications while the free space is being wiped, helps speed up the process. One more thing: If you have a very large hard drive with a lot of free space, this process is going to take a long time, so be prepared. So you aren’t going to lose any data by doing this. ![]() It merely wipes the space Windows shows as free to use. Please note the space between cipher and the forward slash.Īlso, it’s important to note that wiping the free space on your drives does not affect any of your data or programs. If you want to wipe drive D, type cipher /w:D. ![]() So if you want to wipe drive C, type: cipher /w:C. Press the Windows Key plus the “R” key and type:Ĭipher /w:C (where C is the letter of the drive you want to wipe). In fact, with the right software, everything you’ve ever had on your computer, every word you’ve typed, every picture you’ve saved and deleted, everything is recoverable.ĭid you know there’s a hidden utility in Windows that will overwrite all the free space, thus making the files you’ve deleted virtually unrecoverable – or at least very much more difficult to recover? There is and all it takes is a simple command to run it. ![]() Of course this means any of those files are very recoverable at least for a while. So everything you delete is still on your computer, but the hard drive space it used shows as free space. Deleting a file or folder merely tells Windows that the space occupied by the file or folder that you deleted is now available for use, and Windows considers it free space, space it can use. This tip applies to Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8xīy now you know (or you should know) that when you delete files or folders in Windows, they’re not really deleted. Hidden Windows Feature: Wipe free disk space with a simple command
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |