Deleting Files (or not…)

When deleting files in Windows, only the pointer to the file is deleted from the file table, not the actual data. Think of it like an index in a book. If the index pointer for a particular page is removed, it is much harder to find the particular page. If we go through the book, page by page, we will eventually find the page we want without needing the index to help us.

Using free and commercial software recovery tools such as Recuva, we can recover deleted files from a hard drive by scouring all of the bits on a hard drive, much like flipping through all of the pages of a book. For this reason, it is important that we ensure that files we want deleted are fully stripped from the hard drive.

How The Disk Scrubber Works

The MariusSoft Disk Scrubber leverages the power of the windows cipher utility to cleanly wipe deleted files. This process is accomplished in 3 steps. First, 0’s are written over all of the deleted files. This is followed by 1’s being written, and finally random 0’s and 1’s. This 3 step process ensures that sectors are obfuscated enough to where the deleted files are no longer recognizable by recovery software.

Video Presentation

Get your hands on the Disk Scrubber here.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.