Erase Data from hard drive
Secure erasure of data is a constant issue with second hand hardware, particularly hard drives, but potentially any device using storage. Even non-persistent memory, that is designed to clear itself when a device is switched off, can be vulnerable – as studies have shown it is possible to recovery this with appropriate procedures.
When you erase a file on your computer, the actual data in the file is not overwritten. The space utilized by that file is simply marked as “free” for use by other data. Once other data is written in that space, the original data becomes unrecoverable. Those little bits of magnetic media that store 0’s and 1’s are a bit more complex, however, and recovery of data becomes impossible, after the hard drive has been overwritten.
The method to securely erase data is to write over the same physical spot on the hard disk multiple times with different patterns, effectively obliterating the magnetic signatures of the data which was once there. This can be made possible by the use of a good data shredding software.
REMO Shredder software makes use of a powerful shredding algorithm to erase data from the hard drive. The software makes use of several military and government approved shredding patterns to shred data. The software also lets you shred free space from the hard drive.
See also:
Destroying Computer Data
Hard disk shredder
Deleting files permanently
Eraser program
Wipe Disk
Can deleted data really be recovered