Wiping Files and Cleaning Disk Free Space

This tutorial teaches you how to securely wipe files and clean free disk space.

Wiping Files

Assume that you want to wipe file My Plan.doc, Stock.xls and all files under folder Personal Info in My Documents folder.

Let's do it now.

1. Start Windows Explorer if it is not running.
2. Select file My Plan.doc, Stock.xls and folder Personal Info.
3. Right click the mouse button on these selected items.
4. Select iSafeguard and then Wipe from the popup menu;

A confirmation dialog is displayed as shown in the following figure.

5. Check Include sub-directories; and then
6. Click the Yes button.

A progress window appears to show the progress of the wiping process. When wiping is done the progress window closes itself.

Cleaning Disk Free Space

Since Microsoft Word creates temporary files and deletes them when you edit My Plan.doc you need to clean your disk's free space to make sure there is no sensitive information left on your hard drive.

To clean disk free space

1. Start Windows Explorer if it is not running.
2. From Windows Explorer select a drive;
3. Right click the mouse button on the selected drive;

The following popup menu is shown.

4. Select iSafeguard and then Clean Free Space from the popup menu;

This brings up the Free Space Cleaning wizard. Let's follow the wizard to clean the free space. The first is the introduction page as shown below.

5. Click the Next button;

6. Select Local Drive (C:) in the Select a drive to clean field;
7. Enter 3 in the Number of passes field;
8. Click the Next button;

9. Select the Clean it now option;
10. Click the Next button to start cleaning;

Now wait for cleaning process to complete.

11. Click the Finish button to close the wizard.

Now the free space of your C: drive has been cleaned successfully.

Scheduling Cleaning Disk Free Space

Since cleaning free space may take a long time depending on the size of your hard drive. You may want to schedule a task to do the cleaning while you are not using your computer.

To schedule cleaning disk free space you use the same wizard and similar steps. Since you have learned to clean disk's free space you should have no problem schedule a task using the same wizard.