How To Securely Erase Data With Win 7 Cipher Tool

[profhig]

Just deleting files doesn't erase them from the hard drive - they can be recovered by third party programs. You can also buy third party products that will securely and permanently erase the data, but did you know that there is a command line tool in Windows 7 that will do it for you. It's the Cipher command, and here's how it works:

 

1. Open a command prompt with elevated privileges by right clicking cmd.exe and selecting "Run as Administrator."

2. At the prompt, type cipher /w drive:\folder, substituting the drive letter and folder path for "drive" and "folder." For example, to erase the contents of a folder named "Secrets" in the Documents folder of a user named Bob on the C: drive, you would type cipher /w C:\Users\Bob\Documents\Secrets

 

This operation overwrites the selected files with 1s, 0s and random characters.

 

Thanks to http://www.win7news.net/How for this tip.