Do you ever need to securely and forever delete files—make them unrecoverable? I just discovered EraserDropPortable. I’ve used several programs for erasing hard drives, like Eraser, from Source Forge or Darik’s Boot And Nuke. But for getting rid of files and folders, I didn’t have anything.
EraserDrop Portable was developed by John Hiller (he developed a Firefox Portable App), and is part of a suite of portable apps. So this app can be downloaded to a memory stick and used from machine to machine, or you can install to your local drive and use it from there.
What It Does
It securely erases files and folders. Just drag and drop to the icon you’ll see on your desktop after installation. Then you choose what method of erasing you want it to perform – from a 1-pass to Gutman. You’ll get a message when it’s finished telling you what it did and if there were any problems.
In addition to securely erasing your files and folders, you can also tell it to erase the free space on your drive. What’s free space and why would I need to erase it? Reading up on this, I’m finding that when/if you delete files by putting them in the recycle bin, they are deleted, but still recoverable. By using EraserDrop Portable’s wipe free space, this shreds and makes unrecoverable all that data previously deleted. I haven’t done this one yet, although I’m sure it’s OK as the documentation says that only free space is overwritten, not my files!
Download, Install & Start
There’s a link in the first paragraph for the download. I had some problems with the install. I clicked on the .exe and it started like all other installs start, but when it got to the directory to install to, it didn’t choose to put it in my Programs folder. Instead, I got the box below with no destination folder selected.
It took me a couple
of tries to find a folder it liked – it wouldn’t let me put it in the Program Files folder, instead, I chose a subfolder and then when the install was finished, I simply moved the folder up a level so it can be found within the Program Files folder.
The directions say to find the folder and click on the app icon to start the program. I did this a couple of times and it looked like something was starting, but I never saw anything. I went back![image[11]](https://lynndye.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image11.png "image[11]")
and read the instructions again and it said a little icon would appear on my desktop. Well, it was there, but I really just didn’t notice it for awhile because it was so small. So look for the little icon that’s below with the red line through it. It seems to appear at the top left of any application I’m using.You can right-click on the icon and change the picture or hide it.
In my research, I found other shredding and deleting programs that do the same things. I feel good about this one because it came from Source Forge, a respected name and offers great, free, open-source software.