
Permanently erase files on a tablet or phone The program adds itself to File Explorer, so you can easily select a file, folder, or drive to erase.įollow these steps to erase your files with Eraser: It works with almost every version of Windows and offers multiple methods of overwriting your data. Permanently erase files in Windowsįor Windows users, Eraser is a free tool that will overwrite your private data with random patterns until the data is no longer recoverable. There are also many “file erasing” software products like Eraser (for Windows) and CleanMyMac X (for macOS) that will permanently erase files by overwriting them.

The operating system will eventually overwrite files that have no pointers in the directory tree structure, so the longer an unpointed file remains in the hard drive the greater the probability that it has been overwritten. The only way to completely erase a file with no trace is to overwrite the data. How to permanently erase files from a hard drive


The operating system does not know where to locate the file, so it becomes virtually invisible.

Where do deleted files go?Īs mentioned above, files that have been deleted still remain on a computer’s hard drive. It is, however, relatively easy to retrieve deleted files with file recovery software. The file still exists, but the operating system doesn’t know how to find it. When the path is erased, the file essentially becomes invisible to the operating system. The operating system uses these references to build the directory tree structure (the file allocation table ), which consists of the file path for every other file on the hard drive. What is erased is the bit of information that points to the location of the file on the hard drive. When a file is deleted from a hard drive, it is not erased. How to permanently erase files from a hard drive.
