ProtectStar Data Shredder is a secure file deletion tool. It can effectively erase data on your hard drive and on removable drives so that it can't be recovered, ever. It complies with Government standards for data deletion and it uses the German BSI/VS-ITR TL-03423 standard, DoD 5220.22-M ECE, and DoD 5220.22-M E standards.
The application welcomes you with a task launcher that asks you "What would you like to shred?". The options are: erase files and folders, erase free space, erase temporary files, move files and folders securely, and erase hard drives or external device partitions. These are all very self-explanatory. Perhaps the most interesting of those features for me is the one that erases empty space. Sometimes, you can't remember what it was that you deleted in the past, and deleting all the empty spaces guarantees that nothing can be recovered from there.
For secure erase operations, Data Shredder uses a variety of methods. These boil down to how many times data will be overwritten. The more times trash data is written on top of the files you want to delete, the less likely it is that they will be recovered. The ProtectStar Secure Deletion Algorithm uses 50 passes or cycles.
The trial version of this app only allows you to overwrite data with a 1-cycle algorithm.
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