Freeware Spotlight — Zer0

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BEST UTILITIES By Deanna McElveen This is a busy time of year, so this review will be quick. As with many people who work on computers, I am a bit par
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If you have an SSD this utility probably won’t work as advertised, because SSDs don’t write new data to the same location as the old location, even if you ask it to.

You shouldn’t need a secure file erase utility for SSD anyway, because TRIM erases unused data about 20 seconds after you erase the file. To check this is working, download Trimcheck and run it twice.

cheers, Paul

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File Explorer has a “permanent delete” feature. Isn’t that the same as the Zero program?

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Permanent delete in File Explorer just means it isn’t put in the recycle bin. It can still be recovered by Recuva and similar.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Except on SSD because of TRIM.

cheers, Paul

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access-mdb

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Hi, Tracey.

By now you know that I own a computer store, and almost every day I hear about laptop thefts from cars, homes, gyms, and so forth. The tales of larceny usually include horror stories about sensitive information that’s now in the hands of the malefactors.

Thats what is BitLocker designed for (free built-in Windows tool). It keeps unauthenticated people away from your data.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

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Or Veracrypt for Windows Home / non-Windows users.

cheers, Paul

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Concern though regarding the items that don’t work correctly – what else is not working?

I note when going to the Author’s website, the default download is an installable version. Perhaps the portable is not fully compatable?

Windows 10 Pro x64 v22H2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 (RIP)

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Why use a windows utility?  Why not just write random data to every part the entire drive ?  It will take a very long time but you know 100% sure the data on the drive can not be recovered.

Spin up any Linux VM or boot to Linux:

# This will overwrite all partitions, master boot records, and data.

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M #replace X with the target drive letter

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doriel

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Ill wait until I have one spare Pc to try this thank you for your insight
Could it be, that one line in Terminal can replace windows application? I think so.

Other way to ensure your data are not stolen is to rewrite them multiple times -so for example, in the past, I sold the HDD to user, who is non-techy and uses his computer just for surfing web or watching movies.
He does not know how to recover sensitive data and he is happy that his computer is working.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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anonymous wrote:

Why use a windows utility?  Why not just write random data to every part the entire drive ?  It will take a very long time but you know 100% sure the data on the drive can not be recovered.

Free Eraser app does exactly that.

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doriel

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Zer0 sounds really promising. However, I don’t like the fact that the author doesn’t say exactly which of the many deletion algorithms is used by Zer0. At least Eraser gives you a choice of which one you want to use and how many passes to make with the one you choose.

Being able to choose the deletion algorithm is key if you have some really sensitive stuff you want to get rid of, such as tax returns from over a decade ago, or old banking info that’s no longer needed or old medical records you no longer need for one reason or another.

If you’re planning to turn in a used hard drive for recycling and you’ve had some sensitive personal info on it that’s no one else’s business, you don’t want to just delete the file(s) with the simple right shift + delete key combination, you want something quite thorough so the info then becomes completely irretrievable by any program or method.

 

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