Files Deleted Beyond Recovery

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Direct disk viewer
  • (2 more, see all...)

Don't you just love a new hard disk? It moves fast and you have plenty of space on which to store your data. As time goes by, it begins to shrink its size due to the information you save and other reasons like temporary files, duplicates, incomplete uninstall of certain softwares etc. Some years ago, whenever one of my disks got filled with important data that could not be erased as I needed it once or twice a week, I would run to the "IT supermarket" and order a new, larger one.

Those days are long gone, since I learned that even if a HDD appears to be full and there is no space available for writing new data you can still free up some large chunks. The operation is called cleaning up the disk and Windows XP provides this option for free. Whenever you are running low on space on one of the drives, the CleanUp utility offers to get rid of some unused data. Most users panic thinking that the application will erase useful information and cancel its action.

Of course, like all the other products included in XP OS this feature is not too useful as the process is not one of the best on the market (but it helps in some cases). It is exactly the lack of such professional software that gave software developers the chance to create tools for freeing the space on hard disks.

Clean Disk Security provided by Kevin Solway has three main functions: cleaning off the free space, fully and securely erase existing files using one of the three methods available and creating more space on your disk by eliminating unneeded, temporary files.

The interface is very nicely drawn and presents the options in plain view. There are ten options running down in the main window and all of them concert into making your hard disk more secure, freeing up the space in Recent Files List, Recycle Bin, cleaning the Windows temporaries, the History record, Internet browser cache and cookies and clearing Windows Clipboard.

Securing your hard disk means wiping all the data beyond recognition. This means that the erased data using a security measure will be either very difficult or impossible to recover by regular means. This option comes in handy when you want to sell your HDD, take it to repairs etc. The three methods available are Simple (user customized method that supports overwriting the deleted files up to 6 times), NIS (uses 7 passes) and Gutmann (35 passes). Depending on the number of overwrites you impose, the software will take longer or shorter time to complete the operation.

Gutmann method is the most efficient one because the first and last four passes are pseudo random data and all the other overwrites are made randomly. This is the method that will take the longest to complete.

Slack files cleaning is a feature available only in the registered version of the application which comes for $25. "Slack space" represents the number of kilobytes that a file can use in addition to what it is allocated by default. As each cluster of your HDD can be as large as 65,536 bytes, a simple calculation tells us that a file of only one byte can use up to 65KB of disk space. This space is called "slack space".

The Configuration menu of the Clean Disk Security provides the user with the possibility of setting the recent files folders, recycle bin, Windows temporaries, web browser cache and cookies as well as History folder. Additional configuration settings at the bottom of the General window allow you to be prompted in order to verify the deleting of the folder contents (pretty useless for most users, but in some cases it can be a plus). Clean Disk Security can be set to clean Windows Swap file (pagefile) at shutdown.

The developer made a smart move when including a cookie cleanup option. But the smarter move is that it allowed the user to select which cookies should be kept. This way, if you have a website where you login automatically due to the cookies, you will no longer have to introduce the login data again (however, do not lose it, as technology may play a sick trick on you).

Plugins section is designed to include plugins of the applications that may keep track of recent user activities. Removing the stored activities will increase the security and privacy of your actions. A set of plugins for the most used softwares that keep track of the user activity is already included in Clean Disk Security and by checking the boxes next to them you can enable them. This way they can be processed by Clean Disk Security.

The Plugin Editor lets you add some more locations of new softwares for the application to clean.

The Good

Easy to use and very good looking. The secure erase methods include Gutmann, which is one of the most secure overwrite method.

The Bad

The price would be an issue for some users, but taking into consideration what Clean Disk Security can provide, it is rather OK.

I tried deleting a more stubborn file from Direct Disk View, but no matter how many times I tried, the same message announcing me that difficulties were encountered was displayed and the folder still did not go away. The folder contained only about nine subdirectories that were empty.

The Truth

The user can set up to six passes for the Simple erasing method and Gutmann is included. The Direct Disk View can present the data on your HDD in two modes: raw contents and Directory mode (allows you to see everything you have on the disk, even the file names of deleted data).

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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