looking for a free disk wipe program

funkyCable · 13-10-2006, 11:36

Hi

I am looking for a free HDD cleaner I want to clear all my personal stuff off except MS office and some other programs and give my old pc to a friend of mine any ideaS? I got win XP home

Wicked_and_Crazy · 13-10-2006, 11:48

CCLEANER

http://www.filehippo.com/download/e9...cdca/download/

Tightscot · 13-10-2006, 11:48

I think Spybot has a built in shredder tool to shred and delete old files...

**Chris** · 13-10-2006, 13:27

BCWipe v3.08 is very good:

http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe.htm

Scroll down that page a bit to find the download link.

13-10-2006, 14:44

Clean Disk Security is a great program with low level disk wipe or very high level disk wipe. There is a free version with almost all features enabled. A great program if you want to do a free disk space clean. I have read that it is best to use the simple wipe feature as this will meet most peoples requirements (the high level can take hours/days to complete).

pachelbel

ADd · 13-10-2006, 15:44

Eraser is my favourite:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Works a treat

funkyCable · 13-10-2006, 16:59

with all of the above suggestions will they erase everything except programs i.e ms office and xp?

**Chris** · 13-10-2006, 18:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by funkyCable

with all of the above suggestions will they erase everything except programs i.e ms office and xp?

I can only speak for the one I've used ... BCWipe is a utility that gives you the option to 'secure delete' individual files or alternatively to wipe over empty space on the disk to make previously deleted data unrecoverable.

You can't set BCWipe loose on your hard drive and tell it to delete everything except programs. You would have to drag everything you wanted to delete to the trash, empty it, and then run BCWipe on your C: drive, instructing it to over-write all free space on the disk. Depending on how badly you want to make your data unrecoverable, you can choose different levels of destruction and you can even make it wipe over the 'slack' space that is unused within files if you want to ensure that there isn't a single byte of unwiped free hard disk space left.

13-10-2006, 19:40

Funkeycable, it seems like there are many erasing programs to choose from such as those detailed by ADd and ChrisT. Do you just want to delete private information in your documents folder or are you looking for something more. Any file/folder i want to erase i do it by right clicking the mouse which brings up my option to erase completely with either clean disc security or tuneup utilities that i also have installed. Clean Disk also provides similar features to the

program given by ChrisT (ps. this is not a sales pitch for CDS)

Matth · 13-10-2006, 23:59

Much safer to fully erase, reformat, patch up & reinstall, also your friend would get a much cleaner and greener system.

In-situ cleanup is hard to do well, to do it properly, the cleanup tool needs to have a function to wipe free space, slack space as well as any unwanted files.

BCWIPE ticks all the boxes, maybe the evaluation would do unless it is restricted other than by time.

Eraser (free/donation) can clear free space, but didn't notice any mention of slack/swap.

The risk from slack, is that cluster end space MAY have leftover data from previous content. The risk from swap, is that swap file space MAY contain previous data, either written as swap, or allocation containing data from previously deleted files.

DaggaDagga · 14-10-2006, 00:53

The (fairly old) version of BCWipe that I have comes with BCWIPEPD, which is a command-line version of it. Stick it on a boot disk, reboot, point it at your hard disk and it absolutely obliterates all files, partitions, boot records, the lot. It wipes it at the lowest possible level. I wouldn't ever sell an old PC or hard disk without this giving it a workout first.

Personally, I wouldn't trust any program that claims to be able to clean up a Windows installation. Does even MS know where Windows throws all its files?

They may have stopped including the command-line version though. Because it's not installed as such it works for ever, even when taken from a 30-day trial install. If it's still there then it will be in the installation folder - just copy it from there. If it's still available then it's a very good (unintentional) freebie.