Does anybody have any suggestions for programs that will "shred" the free space on your disk drive so it's unrecoverable? Preferably free. The consensus open-source solution seems to be Eraser, but I've had continual problems with it crashing in the first third or so of the wipe. The support forum is all but useless. Kill Disk will only wipe your C drive if you boot up to a floppy or CD. Any other suggestions?
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/SDelete.mspx
This is from the same guy that brought you Process Monitor, Process Explorer, Rootkit Revealer, the PSTools, and many other utilities that I can't live without :).
Thanks,
Mitch
I think Norton (?) does something called "Government Wipe" which writes all 0s, then all 1s, and repeats seven times.
Edit (Correction):
When you select Government Wipe, Wipe Info does the following:
Overwrites the data with 00s
Verifies the 00 overwrite
Overwrites with FFs
Verifies the FF overwrite
Writes a random value, or a value that you choose from 00 to FF
Verifies the random overwrite
Reverifies the random overwrite to ensure that it was written correctly
Repeats as many times as you specify, up to 100
Flint,
That's Norton Ghost, and it does that for wiping entire drives, not just free space. SDelete handles free space, and is also free (gratis) from Microsoft.
Thanks mitch, I missed that my first go-around because it looked like it only worked for Win2K.