1.

Securely Deleting Files on your Windows Computer – S-

Delete

As a part of the Data Cleanup initiative here at Georgia Tech, it is important to remember
to not only securely dispose of paper files (e.g. shredding), but also to securely dispose of
electronic copies of the files. This can be done in one of two ways. You can either
securely delete files that you would normally erase when emptying the recycle bin, or
you can “wipe” the free space on your hard drive. This is a process of over-writing the
space your files used to exist in so that they are not recoverable.

One of the tools that you can use to accomplish this is S-Delete by Microsoft (formerly
Sys Internals). S-Delete is a command line (CLI) application that can securely erase files
and wipe free space on your hard drive.

Please read the directions carefully before beginning! Once you have erased a file using
S-Delete, you cannot recover it! It is highly recommended that you back up your system
and any sensitive files before beginning.

2. S-Delete for File Deletions

The current version of SDelete is 1.51. The website may be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Security/SDelete.mspx

1. To begin, download SDelete to your computer from:

http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/SDelete.zip

2. Unzip the contents to your hard drive (e.g. create a new folder called C:\SDelete and
put the contents in this folder).

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3. Next, let’s create a directory in the C:\SDelete directory called “delete.” You can use
this directory to store all your files you are going to delete using sdelete. To do this,
go to File -> New -> Folder. Then, name the file “delete.”

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4. Before continuing, take the time to move the files you wish to delete to the folder
C:\SDelete\delete. Explorer would be a good option to do this. For our purposes, I
have moved a document called test.doc to the directory.

5. Now, open a Command Prompt by going to Start -> Run and typing in “cmd”.

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6. Now that you have a Command Prompt, you will need to go to the directory that
contains the SDelete executable. Do this by typing:

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cd C:\SDelete

7. To erase a file or directory securely, you will need to run the command:

sdelete <file or directory>

For example, to erase our example file in C:\SDelete\delete, we would run the
command:

sdelete delete\test.doc

When you run this command, you will be asked to agree to the License Terms (click
Agree to continue) and the delete will occur.

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8. In most cases 1 pass will be enough. If you wish to run more than one pass, run the
command with more than one pass

sdelete –p 7 <file or directory>

3. S-Delete for Wiping Free Space on a Hard Drive

1. To wipe the free space on your hard drive and remove any traces of formerly deleted
materials, you would use a similar command. From the SDelete folder, run the
following command from the Command Prompt:

sdelete –z c:

If you wish to make more than 1 pass, run the command with a –p option and the
number of passes you wish to make. For example, if I wanted to make 4 passes over
the free space, I would run:

sdelete –p 4 –z c:

This will take time, so it is best to do this in the evening and let the process run overnight.

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