When purchasing a program to permanently delete files, how does one determine whether or not that program is actually performing its claimed application. The objective of a drive wipe or file shredder program is to overwrite the areas of your hard drive or other digital storage with random patterns of information many times over. This reduces the original file content to gibberish. So how then does one make certain that the information they have permanently erased from their computer is completely wiped clean?
A very simple method to test the effectiveness of a drive wipe program is to follow up that drive wipe with a quick scan using a data recovery tool. To save time you can create a file such as a Microsoft Word document, delete that file and then direct your file recovery tool to find it. You’ll notice that most quality data recovery programs can quickly and easily locate a recently deleted Microsoft Word document. Now take the same document and run it through your file shredder program. If you attempt to use the data recovery program on it now, the recovery process should fail and you have proven that the program you brought to permanently delete files is operating.