Looking for a delete program.

[Compman55]

Have an older system from 09' with minimal use. It has windows XP and it is clean with no viruses. I just want to clean my info out enough someone average can;t run an undelete program and recover it. I don;t need it to be perfect. I know I could zero it, but I want to keep this OS and software installed. Any programs that are recommended.

 

[corkyg]

CCleaner or Revo.

 

[limer]

Eraser for manual shredding

 

[Compman55]

Is there any performance gain in running this type of program to keep the free space clean?

 

[MontyAC]

CCleaner is great for secure deleting.

 

[limer]

Is there any performance gain in running this type of program to keep the free space clean?

Deletion, if used in conjunction with defragmentation may help with performance. Secure deletion is more concerned with removing the ability to recover data, although I suppose you could argue that it helps for the above reason.

Secure deletion (overwriting) is a time consuming and IO intense process so I wouldn't recommend it for casual use. IMO, if you're really concerned about unique data, it probably makes more sense to securely wipe the drive since it's no easy task knowing of all possible locations in the file system, registry, page file etc. you may forget.

 

[jaydeee]

I also use ccleaner.
For the performance... I think minimal specially if the program did not installed a service on your computer.

 

[kleinkinstein]

CCleaner is pitiful at undelete. It's no more effective than Windoze Undelete. Use Revo or Geek Uninstaller