How to Erase Data Beyond Recovery? – Expert Guide

Summary- In this article, we show you how to delete data permanently and erase data beyond recovery. We’ll also explain why it is necessary to delete data beyond recovery and will learn in-depth about the different ways to do so.

Among success factors, data protection is a precious factor in today’s technical environment of society’s life. During the high-rising cybercrimes and smart utilities, there are some tools that are capable to get back your important data, even you have deleted it.. Generally, deleted data leaves traces that can be used to recover them, posing a risk for sensitive data. Therefore, simply deleting it is not a safe solution. You may need to overwrite it or delete data beyond recovery.

For Instance, if you are selling your hardware like computers, hard drives, USB drives, or even external hard drives, you may want to delete your data before getting rid of it but just deleting the files is not the right solution. You will need to delete files beyond recovery.

In the upcoming sections, we will take a closer look at the different methods one can use to safeguard your data via wiping it beyond recovery. But before that, let us observe some of the advantages of deleting data permanently.

Why Delete Files Beyond Recovery?

There are several advantages to erase data beyond recovery as it protects individuals’ privacy. Some more benefits are-

• Prevent Unauthorized Access- When you delete files beyond recovery, it ensures that unauthorized individuals cannot access sensitive data, and it prevents data breaches and theft.
• Compliance with Privacy Regulations- Proper data sanitization helps organizations follow privacy laws like GDPR and HIPAA, which mandate the security of personal information to protect privacy.
• Reduce Storage Costs- Organizations can free up valuable storage space by securely deleting data, which leads to cost savings and improved system performance.
• Maintain Trust- Protecting customer and client data with secure deletion practices helps maintain and build trust, which prevents data mishandling.

In the upcoming section, we will discuss the different methods you can use to wipe files beyond recovery. Let us drive straight into it.

Erase Data Beyond Recovery – Methods

There are several methods you can use to secure your data by deleting it, they are mentioned below. Do follow the step-by-step guide to proceed.

Method 1- Delete Files Beyond Recovery using SDelete

SDelete is derived from the Sysinternals that belongs to the Microsoft company and it works as a command line tool to delete data files securely and to release disk space. Here is the guidelines one can follow to proceed;

Step 1. Go to Microsoft’s SDelete site – “https:>//learn. microsoft. com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete” and download the zip file for the tool.

Step 2. First unzip the file to the directory of the user’s choice.

Step 3. Now, open link and go to : Windows Search bar -> Type Command Prompt.

Step 4. Right-click on it and Run it as Administrator.

Step 5. Navigate to the directory using the cd command as shown below.

cd C:\path\to\sdelete

Step 6. To securely delete a specific file, follow the command below

sdelete -p 3 C:\path\to\file.txt

Here, ‘-p 3’ defines that the file should be overwritten 3 times. You can adjust the number of passes accordingly.

Step 7. To securely delete all the files from a specified directory, follow the command given below.

sdelete -p 3 -s C:\path\to\directory\*

Here, ‘-s’ performs a secure delete of all files in a specified directory.

Step 8. To wipe data beyond recovery from a drive, follow the command line below.

sdelete -z C:

Here, ‘-z’ zeros the free space on the specified drive.

Syntax-

sdelete [-p passes] [-r] [-s] [-q] [-f] <file or directory [...]>

sdelete [-p passes] [-q] [-z|-c] <drive letter [...]>

sdelete [-p passes] [-q] [-z|-c] <physical disk number [...]>

Parameter	Description
-c	Clean free space.
-f	Force arguments containing only letters to be treated as a file/directory rather than a disk. Not required if the argument contains other characters (path separators or file extensions for example).
-p	Specifies the number of overwrite passes (default is 1).
-q	Quiet mode.
-r	Remove the Read-Only attribute.
-s	Recurse subdirectories.
-z	Zero free space (good for virtual disk optimization).
-nobanner	Do not display the startup banner and copyright message.

After the process is completed, you can recheck it by going to the specific file you deleted.

Method 2- Formatting via File Explorer

You can simply use File Explorer to format your drives. Follow the step-by-step guide to proceed.

Step 1. Open File Explorer and navigate to This PC on the left pane.

Step 2. Now, to format a Drive, Right click on it and select Format.

Step 3. A pop-up will appear. Click on the checkbox to deselect Quick Format and select the File System accordingly.

Step 4. Click on Start to confirm the process.

After the process is completed, all the data present on the drive will be formatted.

Method 3- Using Cipher Command to Erase Data Beyond Recovery

The cipher command is a built-in tool for securely deleting data, It can be used to overwrite it. Follow the steps to proceed.

Step 1. Go to the Windows search bar and type Command prompt.

Step 2. Right-click on it and click Run as Administrator.

Step 3. In the command prompt window, type the following command.

cipher /w:f:

Where f is the selected drive to be erase data beyond recovery. You can change it with the drive accordingly.

Step 4. To start the process, press Enter.

This will take a while and once the process is completed, it will show the following results.

These are the methods you can use to delete files beyond recovery. However, there are certain drawbacks carried by these methods, they are listed below.

Limitations of the Above Method to Erase Data Beyond Recovery

Though, the methods mentioned above can erase your data beyond recovery but they do come with certain limitations-

• The command line is not very much graphical to be used by the normal people hence prone to errors.
  The procedure may sometimes consume a considerable amount of time in order to accomplish its task, particularly in cases of big data.
• There are high chances of making mistakes while applying the process. One wrong step can damage your whole data.
• During their manual processes, you have to take care of the input locations, as mistakenly putting the wrong location can hamper your data.

Error-Free Solution To Erase Data Beyond Recovery

As we saw, multiple limitations come into play with the methods mentioned above. To tackle those drawbacks you can use a expert-recommended professional solution like SysTools Data Wipe Software. This utility has many advanced features that can overwrite certain files many times, leaving no scope for data recovery.

The software can alter the algorithms several times so that the data is erase data beyond recovery. There are several filters you can use to make sure that there are no chances of accidental deletion. You get many wiping techniques to delete your data according to your needs.

Features of the Perfect Solution to Erase Data Beyond Recovery

• The software can erase data from different storage devices like HDDs, SSDs, laptops, and servers. After the process is completed, it provides a Data Destruction Report.
• The tool contains many levels of passes – Low Grade, Medium Grade, and High-Grade Passes like Zero (1 pass), Random (1 pass), Peter Gutmann(35 passes), Russian – GOST-R-50739-95 (3 passes), and many more.
• Compliance with more than 20+ global standards including NIST 800-88, DoD 5220.22, and more.
• It provides advanced features to clean up all the traces so that no one can have a chance to recover your data.

Steps of the Expert Solution to Erase Data Beyond Recovery

• To start with, locate and obtain the software, then install it on your device and launch it.

• To start cleaning the selected folders, click on “Select Folder”.

• Navigate to the directory path of the folders you want to delete.

• Press the “Select Folder” button once more to set which folders you would like to delete.

• Click ‘Next’ to proceed with the scan of the chosen folders and files.

• After the scan, decide on a method to delete your data, depending on what you feel most comfortable with.
• To begin wiping, go to the “Delete” button and prepare for the process.

• After selecting the wipe method click on “wipe” button.

• When there is a pending warning pop-up notification, click on it to agree to it by clicking on “Yes”.

• After the files have been successfully deleted, a message box will pop up asking you to say ‘OK’ for the change.

•  When the folders have been erased, the details on the folders that have been removed will appear.

Conclusion

In this article, we gave a comprehensive overview of how to delete data and erase data beyond recovery. We talked about the various benefits of doing so and came across several ways to delete data beyond recovery. Generally, using these easy-to-find methods comes with a lot of limitations and can possibly leave chances of data recovery. Therefore, we recommend you go with the expert-suggested professional solution to delete files beyond recovery.