Bcwipe For Windows

[Cecile Lilien]

Im about to give away an older computer with just the Windows XP operating system intact and all other programs uninstalled. However, upon peeking at the "free space" with software called "Recuva", I notice lots of deleted things that could be recoverable. Some of these include sensitive data files, pdfs, and other personal items that I would not want retrieved.

EDIT - WOW!!! I was not really expecting this many GREAT ideas. My next question is this. If I go the DBAN route and truely wipe the hard drive, then restore my disc image (I use Acronis True Image) will it also restore the free space data? Does imaging just copy readable data? I have an old image of when the OS was first installed.

What I recommend you do is use some sort of backup / imaging software and take a copy of everything on your machine then use something like DBAN to truly wipe the hard drive then restore your backup to the drive.

Sysinternals SDelete. All it does is generate a free-spaced sized file full of junk (or zeros, depending on settings). It gets most all of the free space (I imagine it must miss a few blocks), and it's free. If you put it into the mode where it just writes zeros (instead of multi-pass junk), it's not too slow.

All you need to do is create a bunch of big files that take up all of your free space, then delete them. I'm pretty sure that's how Eraser works. Or if you want random data for some paranoid reason, grab Truecrypt, have it create an encrypted file that's close to the size of your free space (you don't want to fill it all or the computer won't work), and then let it do it's drive randomizer thing.

Shred Free Disk Space - This option will shred unused or free disk space across the whole disk volume. For instance, this option is very useful if you haven't shred your unwanted files regularly but instead you used regular windows delete command and now you want your previously deleted files unretrievable. Those files now can not be shredded by picking them since they are already deleted. This option will enforce shredding of everything you have deleted once using the regular delete command, whether it was yesterday or months ago.

Summit's Hard Disk Scrubber is a Free secure delete program designed to help you permanently destroy sensitive data from your PC. Use Hard Disk Scrubber to overwrite free space on your Windows drives, or to permanently delete files so that they can no longer be recoverred.

/W Removes data from available unused disk space on the entire volume. If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored. The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume. If it is a mount point or points to a directory in another volume, the data on that volume will be removed.

If that's too involved or overkill, grab ccleaner and bcwipe. Nuke all of your personal files by hand, run ccleaner to clean out browser caches and other droppings Windows leaves around, then bcwipe your free space and swap file. No need to go all DoD paranoid -- a single overwrite will suffice, unless you're afraid of the NSA or the mafia. Then defrag your drives, then go through the BCwipe one more time for good measure. This will be a reasonable set of steps for the average person.

Encrypt the disk using the standard MS encryption software which uses a special key unique to each instance of XP and user (Right click the folder/ Properties / Advanced / Encrypt contents to secure data)

create a batch file and three files with zeros, copy two into the other then copy one of the first two and copy again, set the batch file to run until error, after error, delete the files and ring the bell to let you know it finished.

At first remove your old restore points in your windows. This may keep old files that you deleted. Tools that clean free space have no chance to clean this files, until they are freed by removing restore points. After this use tools that remove old template files. there are two location. one is system temp directory under c:\windows , and second are users temp directories under his profile directory. you can reboot computer and remove them manually, or you can use tools like ccleaner. after that cleaning you can trully clean free space. what software you can use, this is explained by other posters in this discussion :) remember about emptying trash.

for paranoids. of course as jim say, you can remove swap file and hibernate file if you are use them, for clearing temporarly stored data under that files. then you do cleaning without swap/hibernate files. But there are lot of your personal data under your profile directory.I recommend create additional admin user, check this work, and completly remove previously used user profile. after this you must check 'user and settings' directory, then if anything exist that was used by removed directory, remove this completly. after that paranoid actions you can clean free space :)

Hi everyone,Honestly, I am a bit puzzled.I have a HDD of which I am trying to erase unused space. I have used Ccleaner for this with both 1 pass and 3 passes. However, when I use Disk Drill to check the there are any recoverable files, it finds ALOT of files. As an example it finds 12.000 jpg pictures. And yes, it is not just small temporary files, but actual pictures that i can preview and recover! This is disturbing to me....It should be mentioned that I have also tried to use Eraser and BCWipe to clear the unused space, but still Disk Drill finds the files. If i use Recuva to recover files, it finds 0 files. Therefore im in doubt what is going on. Is Disk Drill showing files that are not deleted? Do the different tools not have common understanding of what deleted files are?Im runnning a PC with windows 10 Home and Ccleaner 5.72.7994. The HDD is a 500 GB NTFS drive.I also have SSD drives where i want to do the same, but lets start with the HDD.Any ideas why I can still recover these files??

That's why if anything like finances, tax documents, etc., that someone doesn't want anyone else to recover off a sold PC it's best to just replace the drive with a brand new unit, for example a 120-128GB budget SATA SSD for the OS drive (they go for $20 USD or less at the moment from good brand names like ADATA, Kingston, SP Silicon Power, TeamGroup, etc.,) for the OS and the PC will seem fast which can help sale it easier. A cheap 120-128GB budget SSD is at least half the price of a brand new 1TB HDD so let whoever buys the PC replace that drive with a capacity they want.

First of all Wipe Free Space is an overwrite operation, it does not explicitly remove anything. A WFS works by filling a volume's unallocated space with files holding zeroes and then deleting them, thus overwriting the data in free space.

NTFS volumes have a Master File Table which holds a record for every file on the volume. These records are flagged when a file is deleted, and subsequently can be reused, but they are never removed from the MFT. A WFS may - depending on the settings - overwrite the file names in the MFT's records. After a WFS Recuva will still list all these deleted records, with file names which may be valid or not, and these files can be recovered (in as much as the file's overwritten data can be retrieved). But they will either be all zeroes or small zero files. In other words no use to anyone.

I have no experience with Eraser, BCWipe or Disk Drill so I don't know what they are showing. I would say though that CC WFS does overwrite the vast majority of free space, and when that is done, with one pass, that data is not recoverable by any means known or available to the hoi polloi.

I simply used Ccleaner (free) and went to tools->Drive Wiper ->Free space only with both 1 and 3 passes. However, I see that I did not check the "Wipe MFT Free Space" option under settings. Is this necessary? How about the "secure erase" option?

It sounds like you are confident that the files should not be recoverable, but it seems to me that Disk Drill is doing a pretty good job recovering them.... Im suspecting some setting or something is making it impossible for me to clean up....

Drive Wiper runs a wipe MFT before a WFS, in as much as it overwrites the file names and data in the MFT. The total number of deleted files in the MFT remains the same, but the file names and data have gone. WFS in Options has no affect on Drive Wiper settings, and Secure Erase has no effect on WFS at all. So stick to Drive Wiper.

I don't know what Disk Drill is returning (and I don't really want to know). I know that once CC Drive Wiper has overwritten the free space (and it does a preety good job at that) then that overwritten data can't be recovered by any means. Maybe DD is returning deleted file names (which should be ZZ.ZZ after running Drive Wiper) or maybe it is returning live files, but it cannot, under any circumstances, return any data that was there before being overwritten.

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