Why would someone walk the extra mile and erase files that already have been deleted in Windows? The answer to that question is simple: Windows does not really delete the file, it only deletes the reference to the file which tells the system where files are located on the hard drive. It’s like loosing the address of a friend’s house. You could not point your finger on it on a map but it is still existing and calling the friend would reveal its location again.

Files can be recovered if they have not been erased properly. The age of a file plays a role in determining the chances of success. A rule of thumb is that new files have a higher chance to be recovered than files that have been deleted a while ago.

Prevent Restore was designed with ease of use in mind. The user picks a partition that he wants to erase files from, selects the type of data that should replace the deleted files and the program does all the hard work in the background. It uses several security algorithms to overwrite the deleted data on the hard drive ensuring that the data cannot be recovered with recovery software.

So how does it compare to Eraser? The user interface of Prevent Restore is not providing many options to choose from. This is less confusing but advanced computer users might miss features that Eraser offers. Eraser on the other hand comes with options that Prevent Restore does not offer. This includes the selection of the data algorithm to erase files or a scheduler that performs the operation regularly.

Eraser can also erase existing files and folders securely and it does support all Microsoft Windows operating systems from Windows 95 on while Prevent Restore is only compatible to Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Advanced users will most likely stick with Eraser while beginners might tend to work with Prevent Restore to erase files on their system.

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It happens to be that Eraser has another nice feature which is pretty unique if you ask me. You can access the program Eraser Verify from the start menu or by starting verify.exe in the Eraser directory. This little program lets you erase single files with different algorithms to make it impossible to recover by normal means. Every step is shown in a hex editor which means that you can verify on the fly that the file becomes unreadable.

The process itself requires minimum user input. Select the algorithm or keep the default one, select the file that you want to securely erase and click on Erase. The file will be shown before Eraser begins the process to show you how it originally looks like. If you click continue in that step Eraser will start its work. You see how the file looks after every step which means you can verify that the file information have been deleted.

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