14 DAY TRIAL // Windows lets you delete files using basic tasks. Precisely because the deletion process is simple, you still get a chance to recover data using third-party software programs. OW Shredder provides secure cleaning features for making sure files are permanently wiped out from your system.
The program is free and can be deployed on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8. OW Shredder is portable so you can store it on USB flash drives and access its features without having to install it.
Aside from wiping out your files and folders from your computer, the application is able to erase the content of an entire hard drive in a secure way and wipe free space on the disk.
Extra utilities help you analyze the space on the disk occupied by all sorts of files, check out the cluster amount, generate disk stats, create system restore points, manage startup items, and work with a file unlocker.
User interface
OW Shredder provides a clean feature structure, but it cannot be described as highly intuitive. There’s no support for a help manual that could offer detailed information about the function of each dedicated parameter.
It may get a bit confusing at a first glance, as you don’t know how to get started. Only a few tooltips indicate succinct details about the deletion process.
You need to double-click on the main window in order to select the files or drive that you want to erase. Plus, you are allowed to drag and drop items directly in the main window.
Aside from the main graphical user interface, OW Shredder offers a small desktop widget, which can be placed anywhere on the screen. The widget lets you use the drag-and-drop support in order to permanently delete items from your system. You can automatically start the widget and keep it on top of other panels.
The utility can be integrated within the context menu so you can quickly remove and unlock files using right-clicks.
Secure deletion options
OW Shredder supports batch tasks, which means you can process multiple files at the same time or the content of an entire folder. A full drive eraser mode is also on the feature list, useful in case you intend to sell your PC and need to erase sensitive data.
The Drive Trace Remover is developed for wiping out the free space on your disk. At the end of a deletion task, you can make OW Shredder shut down or restart the computer, or close itself.
We have tested the program on Windows 8.1 Pro and noticed that it wipes out files and folders pretty quickly, but the time needed to complete the task depends on the size of the items and number of passes. It eats up a moderate amount of system resources.
Additional system utilities
The built-in disk analyzer can be used for getting information about how much space files occupy on your system. You can filter the results by pictures, videos, songs, documents, archives, system, email, 3D photos, and executable items.
OW Shredder shows a chart, which can be exported to JPG or PNG file format, and displays the percentage occupied by each file type separately.
The cluster analyzer reveals details about how the files are organized in a defragmentation map, which can be saved to JPG or PNG file format.
The utility is able to generate stats about each drive, such as the number of bytes per sector, device ID, firmware revision, interface type, numbers of sectors per track, along with a graphical representation of the used and free space. Text data can be exported to plain text files and the chart to an image file.
What’s more, you can check out a list with system restore points, time and date when each point was created, and delete or generate new recovery points.
The Autostart Manager helps you delete the programs that run at Windows startup in order to make your PC run faster. Detailed information is offered about each utility, like registry key, company, version, and file path.
OW Shredder allows you to gain access to Windows locked files. In order to process a locked file, you firstly need to deal with the errors messages showed in Windows that prevent you from deleting, moving or renaming items. You can unlock files by dragging and dropping them directly on the main window or double-clicking on the main panel for selecting them.
Configuration settings
You can select the shredding algorithm, namely British HMG Baseline, HSC 1614.65, GOST R 50739-95 or RCMP TSSIT OPS-II, which range from one up to seven passes. You can preview the number of iterations and restore chances for each deletion method.
Changing the looks of the app can be done by selecting between there themes, namely red, lime or blue. Plus, you can automatically clean the recycle bin, enable or disable the context menu entries, and choose the preferred cluster mode (blocks or pixels).
The Good
Plus, let’s not forget about the extra set of system tools which show details about the disk via graphs and let you manage startup entries, locked files and system recovery points.
The Bad
During a deletion process, the tool does not reveal proper and detailed information about estimated time and number of removed items. You cannot pause/resume a long file deletion job because you are only left with the option of aborting the process.
Other secure cleaning software programs like Eraser offer a higher number of passes than OW Shredder, more specifically 35. You cannot set up a default wiping algorithm, schedule tasks, force locked files to be unlocked for erasure, and skip UAC (User Account Control) options.
The tool is not able to display all your system restore points and you need to click on the ‘Create’ button in order to make them appear in the list.
OW Shredder does not build up a list with the files that you want to process and exclude some of them so you need to make sure the selected directory contains the exact files.
