How To Permanently Erase Files From Your Computer

You've deleted a file. So that's it. It's no longer available to anyone, is it?

Err. No. It's still there.

You see, computers - and especially computer programmers - take short cuts. And one of the short cuts is by ignoring your command to delete a file. It doesn't really get deleted. Occasionally, this can be useful as it means that if you didn't really want to delete a file, no problem.

But what can you do if you want to completely obliterate all traces of a file? Maybe you're selling your computer and you don't want the new owner to have access to all your passwords. Maybe you had some confidential documents from your company 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.

It doesn't matter what the reason is, 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 need to make sure that the files you want deleted actually get removed totally.

Far and away the best way to do this is by using a software program. The only other way is to format your hard disk tens of times and then splinter it into thousands of little pieces, there's no way you can do this on your own.

Fortunately you can get some cheap software that makes securely deleting files an absolute breeze.

It will overwrite the space occupied by the file you want to delete. Not just once or twice (that's still too easy to recover) but lots and lots of times. Once it's finished, not even the NSA's high powered computers would have the slightest clue about the file's contents.

Which means if you want to be completely certain that your files are permanently deleted, you need to download this software!