Wiping files that have already been Deleted

[Mike_Gore]

I can't seem to find an answer to this question.

If we have a file, and then we delete it, we have a recoverable file. To make the deletion permanent, we would have to wipe the entire free space of the hard drive. This is time consuming and seems unnecessary to me. The hard disk is brand new, and have only used a small amount of the disk space. To be wiping the entire disk just for one or two files seem absurd.

My question is, is there a way(a program/utililty whatever), that can find the file that has been deleted(its location/sector/cluster) and wipe only that specific (area/file) making it unrecoverable?

I don't want a wiping utility that just wipes, there are many out there, I'm looking for what will answer my question.

It seems once you make the mistake of not deleting the file by wiping, you've lost your chance, and now you have to wipe the entire free space.

I would greatly appreciate any answer.


Regards,

Mike

 

[DelJo63]

google for a utility that has a Secure Delete;

this will FIRST rewrite the existing space taken by the file and THEN perform
the delete.

I have OpenPGP from FileAssurity which has this as well as the PGP features.

 

[Mike_Gore]

Thanks for your reply.

I had googled for secure delete utilities. I have found many wiping programs. But the problem is I haven't found an utility that can find a file that has been deleted (its location/sector/cluster) and wipe only that specific (area/file) making it unrecoverable? Since I haven't found any answer, the only solution, is that I wipe the entire free space of the new hard drive (which I haven't even used much), which I do not want (its brand new).

As I said I haven't been able to find an answer.

Mike

 

[DelJo63]

yep -- you're a day late and a dollar short there. Your only choice now is to
wipe the freespace.

Next time, use some utility per the above (eg: plan ahead )

 

[Po`Girl]

Please tell us what the file was.Is it financial,pornographic,or terroristic :unch:

 

[Tedster]

norton utilites 2003 will wipe both free space and files.

Spybot search and destroy has a wipe tool for files only.