FileShred

FileShred is a clear-cut software application that facilitates a user-friendly workspace to help you quickly and securely remove files and folders from the computer, and prevent third parties from recovering your personal information using specialized tools. It comes bundled with a couple of advanced settings which can be easily configured.

The downloaded package includes both the setup and portable edition of FileShred, which have identical features. The key difference is that the portable version can be saved to a removable storage unit, in order to run it on any PC without having to make any installations beforehand.

The GUI is made from a single window divided into two panes, for shredding files and for tinkering with settings, respectively. Files and folders can be submitted for deletion by dropping them into the main window or over the executable file, and you can indicate as many items as you want.

The main window shows the full path, size and location of each file. It's possible to remove any item from the list or clear the entire queue to start the project from scratch, as well as to fiddle with the shredder options when it comes to the block size (in bytes), number of passes (default is 7), and data removal mode (random bytes or zeros). There are no other notable options available here.

The tool carried out file removal jobs rapidly in our tests, during which it remained light on system resources consumption. We have noticed that drag-and-drop is not supported on Windows 8.1 Pro when attempting to move files in the main window, but this can be done by dropping them over the executable file instead.

FileShred comes loaded with the necessary and suffice options for wiping files and entire directories, and it can be easily handled by anyone. Too bad that it hasn't been updated for a long time.