How To Permanently Erase Files From Your Computer

OK, you've highlighted a file and pressed "delete". That's the end of that file. It's no longer available to anyone, is it?

Err. No. It's still on your hard drive.

The problem with computers is that they take short cuts. And one of the things they take a short cut on is that they don't actually delete a file when you click delete. Sometimes, this is useful as it means that if you didn't really want to delete a file, no problem.

But how can you make sure that a deleted file stays completely deleted? Maybe you're passing your old PC onto someone else and you don't want the new owner to have access to all your passwords. Maybe you had a number of confidential files from work and you need to make sure that they're not kept on your hard disk any longer than needed. Maybe it's some email correspondence you don't want anyone else to get hold of.

No matter the reason, just hitting the delete button isn't good enough.

Unless you can guarantee that no-one else will ever have access to your computer, you've got to ensure that any files that need to be deleted forever really are deleted permanently.

This means that you're going to need some help from a software program. Unless you repeatedly format your hard drive and hit it with a big hammer until it breaks into so may pieces even the biggest jigsaw addict would give up.

Fortunately you can get some cheap software that will give you the same kind of file security the government would expect to use.

It will overwrite the space occupied by the file you want to delete. Not just a couple times (that wouldn't be foolproof) but time after time after time. Once it's done it's job, not even the most powerful computers in the world would be able to read the contents of the file.

So if you've got files you want to delete forever, you should download this inexpensive software!