removing a text file beyond recovery possible?

[j0j081]

Say I have a plain text file on my desktop with a lot of my financial information in it. Is there a way to delete this file so it will be impossible (or close enough to it) to be restored/read at a later date? I don't really want to have to process my whole hdd just this file. I know there are a lot of tools out there but I really have no idea how this works so I want to ask here first and make sure I do it right. Thanks.

 

[lxskllr]

SpyBot S&D has a secure shredder. That should do what you want.

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
SpyBot S&D has a secure shredder. That should do what you want.

so it is as simple as that? I imagined there would be more to it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: j0j081

Originally posted by: lxskllr
SpyBot S&D has a secure shredder. That should do what you want.

so it is as simple as that? I imagined there would be more to it.

Options in CCleaner (and apparently spybot) take care of this for you. CCleaner has the option of using NSA level "shredding."

 

[lxskllr]

I'm not a forensics expert, but the idea is to write over the file location 1 or more times. The more writes that are made, the harder it is to recover information. 1 write would be enough to keep geeks out, several writes to keep the government out.

 

[n0cmonkey]

PGP has (had?) an option to overwrite files before deleting them.

 

[RebateMonger]

I imagine it's possible that running defraggers, or even different versions of the same file as new versions are saved, might leave a older copy of the data, not yet overwritten, someplace on the hard drive. Recovery probably wouldn't be a simple operation. But, at first glance, it seems possible.

Discussion on data recovery and the effect of defragging.

"NOTE: This risk from defragging is not necessarily as severe as I previously thought. For example, on one test with a half-full C: partition, I had 8,926 recoverable files before a defrag, and 8,915 recoverable files after. Nonetheless, it?s a good thing I didn?t want to recover the 11 files that were lost in the process!"

 

[rudder]

Sourceforge.net

Search for "eraser"

Very good small program that can run in system tray. You can schedule overwrites of the empty space on HD's, easily and securily remove stuff from recycle bin, etc/