File Shredder

You need an electronic file shredder on your computer for the same reason you need a paper file shredder in your office: as a security measure. If you don't shred any sensitive paper documents, enterprising identity thieves willing to go dumpster diving can retrieve a good amount of your personal from your trash. Similarly, online criminals, once they have gained access to your computer, can browse through the files you deleted looking for any personal data that is important, sensitive, and potentially profitable.

Incidentally, it's not just the mythical "hacker" you may need to keep your deleted files away from. Spouses, children, friends, coworkers, and business rivals are all known to snoop through your computer. Some completely legal corporate espionage is conducted by buying used computers from your competitor, and then retrieving sensitive deleted files off of the hard drives.

The reason retrieval of deleted documents is possible is that when you delete a file in Windows, you're not really deleting it. You're jut sending it to the Recycle Bin. If you delete a file from your Recycle Bin or use the shift+delete key combination, the file disappears from your view on your computer. But in reality, the data is still there on the hard drive.

When you delete a file, all you are really doing is telling Windows that the disk space where the deleted file is saved can now be considered "free space" where other files can be saved. Eventually, Windows will overwrite another file into that disk space, destroying the original deleted file. Until that day, however, the data from that deleted file is still there, and can be retrieved with the proper tools.

Retrieving a deleted file is a lot easier than you might think. A computer-savvy child can go to a software website, download and install a free Data Retrieval program, and recover a "deleted" file, all within a few minutes. If the deleted file has been partially overwritten by a new file, or even if the hard drive has been reformatted to wipe out all data, a professional with specialized knowledge and tools can still recover deleted files.

Disk Doctors, the company that produced File Shredder, is a Data Retrieval company. They know all the tricks of the trade involved in recovering deleted or lost files. Consequently, they also know how to build a program that will completely destroy a sensitive file, preventing anyone else from retrieving it. The rest of this article is dedicated to reviewing File Shredder based on one to five stars in six different areas: functionality, features, ease of use, compatibility, support and price.

How deleted files are finally, completely destroyed is fairly straightforward: the disk space where the file was stored is overwritten with new data. File Shredder offers nine different ways to overwrite deleted files. Some options are very fast but less secure methods, such as overwriting the file with zeros or random numbers. Other options are more secure but take much longer, such as using complicated government and military security algorithms.

Believe it or not, File Shredder actually exceeds the security requirements of the U.S. Department of Defense. If File Shredder is more than good enough for the United States military, it should certainly be good enough for your business or home computer.

Although File Shredder has a relatively short list of features, we award it fives stars because we can't think of any other possible feature that could make this software more effective.

Features include:

• Scheduler: This runs File Shredder at a frequency (like once a day) and time (like 3:00 AM) of your choosing. You can set it to automatically shred specific files and folders, or simply overwrite all the free space on your hard drive.


• Automatic Updates: It is important for any security program to have any and all patches, updates, and upgrades right away to fix any bugs or plug any security holes. File Shredder updates itself automatically, eliminating the human forgetfulness factor from the equation.


• Password Protection: As any document run through the File Shredder is irretrievable lost, you might want to password-protect the software to keep your five-year old from accidentally deleting your stock portfolio.


• Event Logs: File Shredder keeps records of what files were deleted where and when.


• Safety Override: If you accidentally shred an important Windows system file, you could damage or destroy your computer. File Shredder has safety overrides to prevent this.

File Shredder is incredibly easy to use. It imitates Windows Explorer, a program most Windows users are already familiar with. The user interface is clean, simple, and intuitive. There are few advanced settings to confuse the novice user, and File Shredder favors "plain English" over complicated technical jargon.

This is perhaps the only major failing of File Shredder. It only works on Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. As it does not support either Macintosh or Linux, we have to deduct one star. As it does not work with Windows 98 or NT, we have to deduct another star. Finally, it works with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista but, strangely, not the 64-bit version of Windows XP. They loose a half-star for this.

Disk Doctors goes above and beyond most software companies when it comes to support. One year of support is included with the purchase. This includes 24/7/365 support ticket and live chat options, plus telephone help Mondays through Fridays (many software companies don't offer telephone support at all). Once the year's support runs out, File Shredder's better-than-average help menus and Disk Doctors' support website are still available. The Disk Doctors website includes an FAQ section, and extensive knowledge database, and video tutorials.

File Shredder currently costs $49.99, which places it in the upper Shareware price range. Although the software does only one thing (albeit quite well), we can't quite give it five stars at the current price.

File Shredder is an excellent security tool at a very reasonable price. It has excellent functionality, every feature you can imagine, it easy enough for anyone to use. Its excellent product and customer support puts it ahead of free software that does the same thing. Unfortunately, if you use a Mac workstation or a Linux server, you're out of luck.

It is worth pointing out that, once a file has been destroyed by File Shredder, it is practically impossible for the data to ever be retrieved. Therefore, if you use File Shredder, be very careful with it. Playing with File Shredder is like playing with fire-it can be either a helpful tool or a destructive weapon, and thus demands both caution and respect in its use.