Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is currently supported under Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Why Use Eraser?
Most people have some data that they would rather not share with others - passwords, personal information, classified documents from work, financial records, self-written poems, the list continues. Perhaps you have saved some of this information on your computer where it is conveniently at your reach, but when the time comes to remove the data from your hard disk, things get a bit more complicated and maintaining your privacy is not as simple as it may have seemed at first.
Your first thought may be that when you "delete" the file, the data is gone. Not quite, when you delete a file, the operating system does not really remove the file from the disk; it only removes the reference of the file from the file system table. The file remains on the disk until another file is created over it, and even after that, it might be possible to recover data by studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface.
Before the file is overwritten, anyone can easily retrieve it with a disk maintenance or an undelete utility. There are several problems in secure file removal, mostly caused by the use of write cache, construction of the hard disk and the use of data encoding. These problems have been taken into consideration when Eraser was designed, and because of this intuitive design and a simple user interface, you can safely and easily erase private data from your hard drive.
Eraser Features:
- It works with any drive that works with Windows
- Secure drive erasure methods are supported out of the box
- Erases files, folders and their previously deleted counterparts
- Works with an extremely customizable Scheduler
What"s new in this version:
- Updated Italian translation.
- Updated LZMA SDK for Bootstrapper to use the beta 9.22 SDK which is the only one available from 7-zip.
- Improved Recycle Bin support for non-NTFS drives on Windows.
- Fixed Scheduler display bug where tasks added using the Shell Context Menu could appear in the schedule as Not Queued even if it was configured to run automatically, if a task was already running.
- Fixed dereferencing of non-volume reparse points. Erasing files in earlier versions when a reparse point was in a path could cause Eraser to refuse erasing the file.
- Disable all entropy mixing algorithms except SHA-1 so that Eraser can continue to function even when FIPS mode is enabled under Windows XP.
- Bug fix for CryptoAPI crash on startup under certain circumstances.
- Fixed persistence of non-default erasure methods for erasure targets.
- Allow users to exit from an invalid custom erasure method editor state if he clicks cancel or closes the dialog.
Download: Eraser 6.0.10.2620 | (8.7 MB) Freeware
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