People around the world only think about ways of protecting their files and folders from getting deleted or lost due to various reasons, while only a few of them are aware of the fact, that like recovering data, getting rid of data is also an important task.
There has for long been a misconception that getting rid of a file is as easy as hitting the delete button.
This method of deletion definitely deletes the file from the location, but fails to permanently erase it.
To permanently delete files, the user would still need to do more than just plain deletion.
The question about permanent data erasure gains a lot of importance when it comes to protection of critical and private data, which is bound to be misused.
To ensure that this does not happen, people make use of a file shredding tool.
A file shredding tool is more than just a deletion utility.
Usually, file shredding utilities make use of two methods to delete files permanently.
The first is by overwriting of data by using random characters.
The second method that is used to delete files is by multiple overwriting of the data using 1's and 0's.
These methods are used even by some of the security agencies worldwide.
The very fact that this kind of data erasure needs to be done is because of the very fact, that the data recovery software available in the market are capable enough of recovering data that have been deleted, but find it extremely difficult to recover the data that has been erased permanently.