Internet Security - Eraser Software

The internet is full of software packages that handle the drive cleanup task in varied ways. Many of these fall into the eraser software category, several are for-profit software and some are open source. But this is not all that these software tools can do, there are many that also perform drive 'washing', scan hard disks for porn or adult files, detect the presence of illegal or unlicensed software, and help you find where all the space has gone on your drive.

Despite comments to the contrary, system improvements can be made by spending a little time cleaning out your pc system. Any computer is potentially able to perform better when they have a smaller number of files that are saved, retrieved and otherwise handled by the drive storage system. The additional space that is freed up in the cleaning process can only be of benefit by making space available for more important data. Dont forget that defragmentation is speedier when the system has lots of free space to shuffle files around in. Also, when private files are deleted, the risk is reduced that their contents can be read and mishandled by untrusted parties.

Hard disk analysis and cleaning tools come in several varieties. To begin with we can define the set of the hard disk cleaners such as the free CCCleaner software, that purge unused files and restore free space to the available pool. There are 'PC privacy' tools clean up internet tracks and delete traces of things you have typed while searching from IE and Firefox, and some other browsers, including 'evidence' and 'privacy' cleanup tools. Also common is the porn detector software, that can reveal the existence of porn or other suspicious items and assists the user in deletion of any files that are not wanted. One more group of cleanup utilities is the data erasing program which can overwrite with 1s and 0s, random data from anywhere on the disk so no matter what methods are used, it cannot be retrieved.

Of course there are good reasons at hand why clearing out old files from your hard drive is highly recommended. Your PC's speed, when reading files from the hard drive or other storage system is dependent upon, amongst other things, how many and how large the files are stored there. This is because as the file allocation tables get larger, everything has to work harder when files are accessed. And whenever we delete or save a file, file fragmentation particularly for larger files, deteriorates drive performance. Your privacy is at stake too, as you store more and more of your private files (banking, identification etc) there is increased risk that any other computer user of your PC will find them. Regularly cleaning out your hard drives will give back resources to the system and this might stave off having to buy a bigger hard drive.

Even though the end result of getting rid of unwanted hard drive files is generally desirable, we have to think about the downsides before beginning. We need to keep in mind that critical documents may be lost by the software we use and even when you handle the cleaning without use of software. In any case the cleanup process for the files that are no longer needed consumes your time particularly when the manual methods are used however software use will will take time as well. Usually however these risks can be mitigated and the gains certainly outweigh these drawbacks.