Permadelete Portable

It's almost common knowledge that deleting files, does not necessarily mean that they're gone forever of fully destroyed, as most capable data recovery utilities are stubbornly capable of proving.

Of course, if you want to prevent the recovery of sensitive data, it's recommended that you employ the services provided by the so-called file shredders - take, for example, Permadelete.

That said, if you're looking for a portable file shredder that you can take with you on most storage devices, and utter simplicity is what you're after, then you will be interested in Permadelete Portable.

The first thing you should know is that all the portability advantages provided by this app don't come without a price. The main difference between Permadelete and its portable counterpart presented here is that the latter does not offer shell integration.

Basically, the portable version does not integrate with Windows's contextual menu, which is somewhat understandable. Evidently, this might be a slight drawback for various users but, all things considered, the portable version delivers most of what its installer counterpart offers.

If you're willing to sacrifice a bit of accessibility for portability, then download the app, unzip its package, and launch it via the designated executable file. Since it does not require installation, your only concern is making sure that .NET Framework 4.5 or later is present on your computer.

You will be greeted by a user-friendly and modern-looking user interface which sports a minimalist layout and a few self-explanatory controls. That said, to shred files or folders, simply drag and drop them on the app's main window and confirm the process when the dialog window pops up.

By now, it's quite clear that we're dealing with a relatively basic file shredder that's mainly aimed at novice or everyday users who simply want a hassle-free way of making sure that all traces of their sensitive data becomes unrecoverable.

Before we end, there's one more detail about Permadelete and its portable counterpart that might be worthy of your attention. When you shred a file, the app overwrites the original data with dummy information. This is only relevant for typical HDDs, but not so much in the case of modern SSDs, in which case the app simply deletes the files and does not overwrite them.