Wipe free space command
When you delete sensitive files using standard Windows ‘Delete’ command, the operating system does not shred contents
of the documents from hard drive, it just marks disk space, earlier occupied by the files, as ‘free’. To completely
remove all the traces of the earlier deleted files, use Wipe Free Space command to wipe
free space on the disk,
where these files were stored.
To wipe free space on a disk, run Wipe Free Space command from ‘My Computer’ window using
a pop-up menu. Right-click on the drive item you want to wipe: this will bring up the menu that includes Wipe Free Space. The following picture illustrates how to run the command:
When you run the Wipe Free Space command the following window appears:
The following wiping schemes are embedded in BCWipe:
- US DoD 5220.22-M(ECE) - 7 passes
- US DoD 5220.22-M(E) - 3 passes
- German BCI/VSITR
- US DoE - Department of Energy standard
- Bruce Schneier
- Peter Gutmann
- one random pass
Every pass in these schemes uses a definite byte pattern, and if you wish, you can get detailed description of the
patterns by pressing
Edit button. Also, press this button if you want to
create and use custom wiping scheme.
NOTE: Before running the
Wipe Free Space command on the disk,
it would be wise to:
- close all applications. Some programs create temporary files while they are running. Those temporary files will not be wiped when you run the command.
Besides, Windows swap file (or page-file) may store sensitive information that is used by currently loaded applications. This part of swap file will not be wiped.
-
check the disk for errors. If some part of the hard drive was in incorrect state before running BCWipe,
it may cause more serious problem when BCWipe allocates all available space.