• Deleting files in Windows doesn’t actually erase them, making them easy to recover.

• Encrypting your files or using the Cipher command to overwrite free space may prevent files from being recovered.

• To be safe, use file shredding applications, securely erase entire disks, and consider physically destroying disks if necessary.

When you tell Windows to delete a file, it’s usually in the hope that the file will be gone forever. However, a good data recovery service can often resurrect these files. So it’s important to know how to keep your sensitive information dead and buried.

Why delete is not really delete

When you delete a file in Windows, it doesn’t immediately disappear from your drive. Instead, Windows marks the file’s storage space as free, signaling that it may be overwritten by new data in the future. In the meantime, chunks of your files still exist on disk, making their recovery relatively easy with the proper tools and knowledge.

Encrypt files to prevent recovery

An easy way to get around this problem is to encrypt your hard drive or the individual files and folders you want to delete. You can use Bitlocker or third-party applications like Veracrypt to get the job done. This doesn’t stop someone from recovering the deleted data, but it’s gibberish without the decryption key, so you might as well delete it

Cipher command overwrites free space

Windows has a built-in tool called “Encrypt” which will overwrite all empty space with random data. This prevents files from being “restored”, although this can take a long time if you have a lot of free space, and I wouldn’t recommend doing this on an SSD because it will increase the amount of wear on the drive Cipher is actually an encryption tool, as the name suggests, but if you use the “/w” switch, it overwrites unallocated space.

All you need to do is open the Command Prompt or Terminal app as administrator and type:

cipher /w:c:

This will overwrite all free space on your C drive. Change the drive letter if necessary. You also don’t have to browse the entire drive, you can use a full path such as “C:\secretstuff” which is faster because it only overwrites deleted items from that folder. Just keep in mind that this will only work with drives using the NTFS file system.

Use a third-party file shredder

You can also use a special “file shredder” application, which will overwrite the deleted file multiple times until there is little or no chance of it being recovered. Again, thanks to how SSDs work, the same method is not recommended, but some file shredding applications are “SSD-friendly” and will use the correct methods to ensure that a file cannot be recovered from the drive after its deletion.

Securely erase entire disks

For SSDs, the best method to ensure that data is not recoverable is the “secure erase” feature. Now, the way SSD servicing works (especially the TRIM command) makes it very unlikely to recover deleted data, but sometimes you can find a secure SSD erase feature in your computer’s BIOS, or, better yet, use the software provided. by the drive manufacturer.

For example, that of Samsung Magician the software offers a “secure erase” option. Before using a BIOS or other third-party tool to securely erase your SSD, check if the manufacturer offers its own official tool for this purpose.

Try recovery as a test

If you’re feeling paranoid, a good step to take after safely wiping your drive is to attempt to recover the files yourself. You can use an app like Recuva to check if files are in a recoverable state. You don’t actually have to do the recovery, just check if the software finds anything, but avoid actually recovering the data.

Physically shred the disks if necessary

If you plan to throw away a disk or if the disk fails before you have a chance to properly erase it, the best option is to physically destroy the disk. If you take a hammer and smash everything into small pieces, you’ll probably be fine, but if you’re worried about a three-letter agency getting their hands on your data, you might want to use disk shredding. services.

These are companies that have special equipment to magnetically erase and/or physically shred a ride so that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can never reconstruct your data again.