Hi everyone,

Has anyone used the Windows Cipher command to wipe free space on a hard drive ? I did not know the command existed & I'm curious to learn more as a matter of general interest. It comes on windows 2000 and XP professional, but I don't think it's supported on XP home edition. You can download cipher.exe and it might work on XP home edition as well. It may also work on media center if it's supported on XP professional as I hear media center and Professional are very similar at their core.

In edition to wiping all free space, I think you can set it to wipe free space within a specific folder. It's supposed to do three passes with random data.

How to use...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315672

Download exe if you don't already have it pre-installed...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en

I have used eraser in the past to wipe free space but I did not really like it because it takes very long even set on a one pass overwrite. Also, with eraser, after you use it and you right click on the C drive and look at the properties, it seems you lose about 60 GB of free space as compared to the prior wipe free space listing, perhaps it's not actually lost but the amount free space that is listed is reduced.

I wonder it it's safe to run Cipher free space wipe once every year to two or if it should be used only as a one shot deal before you get rid of a computer or hard drive ?

I think both windows and hard drives themselves should come with a feature to completely wipe the hard drive prior to when a computer is discarded. This is not just a matter of personal computers, business computers have our bank records, credit card data, passwords, private research data, and who knows what else that could be recovered from old hard drives if they are not physically destroyed. Companies should be required to destroy this data.

I like the idea of using and application that's part of windows and not a third party application, but you could always wipe again with a third party app if you really wanted to.

I don't understand why windows does not simply come with an option to easily securely erase files, i.e., just press crt + something + delete for secure delete or after pressing delete you could get a pop up box that asks whether you want a secure wipe or normal windows delete. It could be fast and simple.

I would be interested in hearing feedback from anyone that's used Cipher.exe to wipe free space and whether it works on XP media center SP2.

Thanks
John