Portable Eraser data

securely erase your data

Eraser Portable is a secure data removal tool that runs directly from your iPod, USB thumbdrive, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it right into any Windows computer and use it just like you would on your own. It is a repackaged version of the popular Eraser utility designed with portability in mind, so it has all the same great features of Eraser, but there's nothing to install.

Download 5.8.8for Windows, English
1MB download / 3MB installed

Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Eraser is currently supported under Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Eraser is Free software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.

Why Use Eraser?

Most people have some data that they would rather not share with others - passwords, personal information, classified documents from work, financial records, self-written poems, the list continues.

Perhaps you have saved some of this information on your computer where it is conveniently at your reach, but when the time comes to remove the data from your hard disk, things get a bit more complicated and maintaining your privacy is not as simple as it may have seemed at first.

Your first thought may be that when you 'delete' the file, the data is gone. Not quite, when you delete a file, the operating system does not really remove the file from the disk; it only removes the reference of the file from the file system table. The file remains on the disk until another file is created over it, and even after that, it might be possible to recover data by studying the magnetic fields on the disk platter surface.

Before the file is overwritten, anyone can easily retrieve it with a disk maintenance or an undelete utility.

There are several problems in secure file removal, mostly caused by the use of write cache, construction of the hard disk and the use of data encoding. These problems have been taken into consideration when Eraser was designed, and because of this intuitive design and a simple user interface, you can safely and easily erase private data from your hard drive.

Features

Eraser Portable is a secure file-deletion and data wiping utility. With support for multiple wipes, pattern writing and more, it can be used to securely delete any sensitive data. 

Flash Drive Note: Nearly all modern flash drives use wear leveling to spread write operations out over a device. This interferes with Eraser (and other secure deletion utilities) ability to wipe single files. Wiping an entire drive or erasing a file and then wiping free space may be a little more secure but still not delete all data, though it will put additional wear on your drive.

• It works with Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), Windows Server 2003 (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 can still be used with version 5.7!
• It works with any drive that works with Windows
• Secure drive erasure methods are supported out of the box
• Erases files, folders and their previously deleted counterparts
• Works with an extremely customisable Scheduler

Download Details

• Publisher: LinktoHow and the Eraser team
• Date updated: 2009-12-31
• System Requirements: 2000/XP/Vista/7
• License: Free / Open Source (GPL)
• Source Code: Launcher (included), Eraser source
• MD5 Hash (for the geeks): 23f5bd1bc5ee059986990029d03e66aa