Active@ KillDisk 10.1.1

After you remove files or folders by emptying your recycle bin or by using the "delete" command, you may think nobody can recover that info anymore, but this is not true. There are specialized tools that can recover files even from formatted disks. Fortunately, there are also tools like Active@ KillDisk which helps you make sure your sensitive information is securely deleted from your disk at surface level, so that no person or tool can recover it, not even you!

The program offers you a user-friendly interface with various panels where you can select any of your fixed or removable disks. When you do so, you can see all its partitions including the hidden ones, the system reserved ones and even the unallocated space. Finally, after selecting a valid partition, you can perform several actions like "scan" (to list all the partition's files and folders), "wipe" or "kill". Basically, the difference between wipe and kill actions is that wipe takes care of clearing the information contained in the apparently unoccupied space of your disk - where important traces of previously existing files may still remain -, while kill securely erases the selected file/folder, or the entire information of the selected partition/disk.

Another very important aspect about Active@ KillDisk is that it comes in two editions: Free and Professional. Of course, the Professional edition is paid and offers more functionality than the Free one, but the main difference between them is, I'd say, the number of erasing methods each one supports. While the Free edition only supports the "one-pass zeros" method, the Professional edition supports 23 strong methods including the "DoD 5220.22-M" used by the US Department of Defense.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that Active@ KillDisk comes with an extra tool called Active@ Boot Disk, which allows you to create a bootable CD/DVD, USB flash drive or ISO image file that will help you recover your system in case of disaster.

To cut a long story short, in case you need to remove sensitive information from your disk, being sure that nobody else will be able to recover that information anymore, I would definitely recommend you to use a tool like Active@ KillDisk, even its free edition.