Wipe away private data on the hard drive

Today, hackers don't have to spend much effort to program sophisticated code that can steal your personal information. They just need to walk around the flea market to buy used hard disks and from there can also gather many important personal information left by users accidentally on these discarded hard disks.

The fact that actions such as reformatting or repartitioning a hard disk cannot 'root up' the hard disk information. Similarly, deleting or moving files to the Recycle Bin folder is actually just another way of managing Windows files. Therefore, to ensure all your important information on the hard disk is completely erased, you should use a specialized tool or procedure mentioned below:

A very good utility for clearing hard disk data is DBAN (free download at find.pcworld.com/54672). This utility will perform 'block data eraser', overwriting multiple 'random' data on each block of the hard disk. DBAN can create computer boot floppy or ISO file to create bootable CD.

Windows XP's built-in encryption feature keeps sensitive files safe before and after you delete them.

Meanwhile, the Secure Erase utility (find.pcworld.com/54638) uses the Disk Drive Secure Erase command available in the firmware of newer hard disks. Secure Erase completes the entire task of erasing a hard disk in just half the time of applications with similar features.

Encrypt before deleting

File encryption on hard disks is a way to prevent illegal access to important information, but you can also take advantage of this feature to make sure the files you have deleted cannot be used. 'restore' the original. If you encrypt a file before deleting, someone with the data recovery utility can still save the encrypted version but cannot decrypt it. Without decryption keys, your data will always be safe.

To use the encryption utility in Windows XP, right-click the file or folder you want to encrypt, select Properties, and then in the Properties window, click Advanced, check Encrypt contents to secure data, finally is click OK. (Figure 1). You can encrypt any file, except system files. When a certain folder is encrypted, not only all existing files and subdirectories are encrypted, but new files created later will also be encrypted.

Windows XP automatically creates a unique decryption key if you use this feature. However, if you uninstall Windows XP without backing up these keys, and not exposing them, no one (including yourself) cannot decrypt those files. If you encrypt data this way, you don't need to use a secure deletion tool anymore, all you need to do is throw the hard disk into the trash.

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