William Craig, I have the same problem on Windows 10 desktop. It wasn't a problem on my Windows 11 laptop.

William Craig, see https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/doyourdata-super-eraser-6-8/#comment-719926
TK

Terry, does DPWipe handle files unwritten cluster tips that may have been inherited from previous cluster full use? Does it also handle files in ACL protected locations e.g. files and folders in program files folder that require elevated/administrator rights to write to and modify/delete?
TK

TK, not it does not support protected files from locations like C:\Program Files, drag and drop from such protected locations is disabled and there is no other way to select the item to be erased. DYD super eraser or its twin AWEERASE both can handle these protected file erasures.
TK

Laurie, you miss the point. It does not just delete the file/folder/etc without putting it in the trash can, it also OVERWRITES that area on your disk, MULTIPLE times, with securely created 1's, 0's, and random patterns making it impossible to recover. Files deleted, even not in your trashcan, CAN be recovered if the recovery is done immediately and partially recovered if there has not been much disk action (so as to reuse the disk area previously occupied by the deleted file. From their web page: "Government & military erasure standards including DoD 5220.22-M, Peter Gutmann's algorithm, etc."

Laurie, it will not permanently delete your dara,, your data is always available in your device sectors... which is recoverable after deleteing...

Laurie, though Windows warns you that pressing shift+delete will permanently delete your file, actually the file is not deleted. Windows just removes the filename from the Folder listing and marks the areas that the file occupies, as "free".

Later, when you (or Windows) saves files, depending on the free space available and other factors, it may use some of these so-called "free" locations.

So, since the file contents are not actually deleted, it is possible to get back or recover a deleted file using special undelete programs or file retrieval tools.

Programs like today's DoYourData Super Eraser overwrite these locations with random data, thus making it impossible to recover your file contents.

This is usually not important for us normal users unless you work with super confidential information that "should not get into the wrong hands".

Laurie, Laurie, When you delete files through keyboard shortcuts, the entire “Recycle Bin” step is skipped. But until the space your file was occupying is actually overwritten, the data can be recovered.

To permanently get rid of the file, you need a secure delete tool to shred the file or overwrite the space.

In practical terms, though, doing the will work for most situations, since unless someone suspects that you deleted something, they won't be looking for it if it's not visible in a file manager.

What the current free software offered here does is put a nice wrapper on a utility to overwrite the space that the file took up on the hard drive or SSD. There are some free utilities that do the same thing, but this has a nice GUI and also is free with a lifetime license (no updates, but I doubt you'd need an update for something like this)

Laurie,
Hmmm. never heard that before. Is this a Mac thing ?

Laurie, the process you describe doesn't just throw the deleted file into the trash, the data still remains on the media and can be recovered as long as it isn't overwritten by something.

Laurie, that just deletes the files directory entry, the data remains on electromechanical hard drives and USB FLASH drives data areas until it is overwritten by other files or a 3rd party program designed to overwrite the data before deleting it from the directory entry like todays giveaway.
TK

Laurie, that just deletes the files and they can be recovered with the right program until overwritten with data. To permenently erase the files they must be over-written preferably several times like the program offered today does.

Laurie,
Not quite. Holding the shift key down while pressing delete simply BYPASSES the data being sent to the Recycle Bin and "tells" the system that the area being used to store that data can now be used to store other data. The original data can still be recovered using recovery software until it has been overwritten by new data.

Laurie, shift and delete does not remove anything and those files can easily be recovered, they are just marked on the disc as deleted without being deleted. In order to fully delete an item that sate needs to be overwritten multiple times with random data to prevent recovery

Paul Whiteley, Eric, mariposaman, TK and others that say the data is not deleted, I believe you are talking about the hard drives that run on spinning platters and not the SSD, because there is a huge difference of how the files are deleted and or recovered. Spinning disk write the data in sectors and segments, while SSD writes them in 3D mode (vertical and horizontal rows). Second, Spinning disk HD write the data in a daisy chain mode (the previous sectors points to the next sector and so on), but SSD uses address data of the location of the next part of the file, therefore SSD drive needs only erase the address locations and that is all. If the data address location is gone, there is no possible recovery of any data. No need to destroy you SSD by writing endless 0 and 1s on the same cell in the SSD.

mike, i did specify electromechanical drives and FLASH drives, I'll add another caveat FLASH drives that do not support TRIM or in operating systems that do not support TRIM command to de-allocate sectors once the file has been deleted "permanently" by windows, even then TRIM implementation is not universally equal amongst all manufactures, Also TRIM does not work with TRIM compatible media in a USB caddy even where the bridging chip emulates a SCSI storage interface as windows does not recognise SSD through a SCSI bridging chip and therefore does not implement SCSI deallocate command of attempt to do the equivalent of a scheduled TRIM/Deallocate on the External SSD drive and of course no FLASH USB/SDcard etc of any kind supports TRIM and so only erase by overwriting once with zero's BUT that is NOT the discussion of this thread which is the OP believing the marketing based statements that SHIFT delete permanently deletes data which it does NOT on the specified media and most other types of scenario which is the nature of my reply. I presume you also know that some SSD manufactures have modified their firmware to detect all zero sector writes as special cases and treats them as a TRIM command for the given sector and queues that sector for erasure when applicable (the rest of the erase page involved is all queued for erasure) to overcome windows inability to implement TRIM in all possible scenarios including inside USB caddies!
TK

Paul Whiteley, they do not ever need to be overwritten multiple times the original paper on this was hypothetical in nature and no hard drive data that had been overwritten at least once has ever been publicly published as recovered by any nation state. It was not even theory as it had never been demonstrated on high density electromechanical drive only low density FM and MFM media which no one uses for secure data these days. Writing all zeros for a single pass is sufficient to exclude state actors and other criminals from recovering data even in the most advanced labs that exist. It is most wear efficient, energy efficient, time efficient way of doing a sanitization of private data from any current drive technology. the 35 pass method was just a hypothetical sequence for all magnetic storage technologies available at the time the hypothetical paper was composed and should never be used today except by morons that want to waste time, energy and media life.
TK

TK, While I agree 35 times is overkill & really only necessary for older magnetic drives, as a photographer I have been grateful in the past for not using this type of software.....I have recovered tens of gigabytes of image files from older style HD drives that I thought I had cleared by deletion using recovery software......

I have also managed to recover deleted files from SD cards & CF cards before so simple deletion does not prevent recovery even on modern media......I have also managed to recover data from quick formatted cards

With older drives I still go with the destroy the drive to destroy the data philosophy & do not recycle, donate or gift devices unless the HDD has been replaced first with a clean OS install

Paul Whiteley, physical destruction of electro-magnetic hard drives is NOT sufficient for complete protection since the magnetic domains still exist on the platter and can be recovered using methods described elsewhere... you'd need to fully degauss the platters too so the magnetic domains where no longer detectable. But for normal use and secure deletion of in place hard drives there are multiple things to consider... temp files can contain temporary copies of files that are not even deleted so will not be wiped by spare space erasure or TRIM so temp files MUST be deleted "permanently" as far as MS pretends and the swap file can contain copies of files too. Cluster tips can contain data too! Generally speaking I don't put on any electronic device that I cannot live with being shared publicly... therefore I only have to be concerned about mine and other peoples personal and professional data protection which is generally livable with if leaked. But one has to test methods used to securely delete data to see if it really has written the overwrite data to the media and not just to the system or drives cache memory! Todays product has MANY unknowns, does it overwrite directory entries with multiple random/plausible filenames before deleting the file using MS method and truncating the file after overwriting the files data allocation to end of cluster usage so tips are erased at this time then deleting the file entry with an unrecoverable filename and incalculable file length and no discernible data in the data are of the drive. And of course making sure all caches are flushed between writes. It is possible to securely sanitize a system before donating it but it has to be done right and with the right software.
TK

Eric, in one way sending files and folders to the recycle bin before emptying the recycle bin does actually delete MORE information than SHIFT deletion bypassing the recycle bin as the recycle bin renames the file on the media and moving it's hardlink (directory entry) to the recycled folder and the real name and folder location is stored in the recycle bin database and not associated directly with the recycled file so one cannot recover the real name of files recovered from an empty recycle bin operation which can be valuable data lost... So in essence permanently deleting according to MS is less secure than sending to recycle bin then emptying the recycle bin... One thing missing with this giveaway is secure deletion of the recycle bin database and contents, one can only do that by wiping the entire drive or potentially by emptying the recycle bin and then erasing the free space but both those ways destroy more data and take more energy and time than would be needed if the job was done properly in the first place as a discrete operation.
TK