How to Securely and Completely Delete Files in Windows 10

# Securely Deleting Files in Windows 10: A Comprehensive Guide Using SDelete

## Introduction

In today's digital age, ensuring the secure deletion of files is crucial, especially when discarding or transferring computing devices. Many users assume that deleting files via the Recycle Bin or shredding them with built-in tools suffices for permanent removal. However, this is a misconception. Files and directories in Windows are merely flagged for potential recovery unless explicitly overwritten, making them vulnerable to data recovery software. This guide explores how to securely erase files using SDelete, a powerful tool from Microsoft's Sysinternals package.

## What You Need to Know

Windows traditionally stores deleted files in the Recycle Bin, allowing users to restore them if needed. However, once emptied or permanently deleted, these files aren't immediately removed. Instead, their space is marked as free, leaving remnants recoverable through specialized software. This poses a significant privacy and security risk when discarding or reallocating devices.

Secure deletion ensures data recovery tools cannot retrieve sensitive information by overwriting file contents multiple times. SDelete, developed by Microsoft's Sysinternals team, is an excellent tool for this purpose, offering robust features for both files and free space sanitization.

## Introducing SDelete

SDelete, short for Secure Delete, is a command-line utility designed to securely erase files or free disk space. It was created by Mark Russinovich, who later joined Microsoft. As part of the Sysinternals suite, SDelete is freely available and integrates seamlessly with Windows operating systems.

SDelete's capabilities include:

- **Removing Read/Write Attributes:** This allows you to modify file permissions.

- **Cleaning Free Space:** Erases unused disk space to prevent data recovery.

- **Specifying Overwrites:** You can choose how many times files are overwritten, enhancing security.

- **Recursive Deletion:** Can delete entire directories and subdirectories.

## Step-by-Step Guide: Using SDelete in PowerShell

### Downloading and Installing SDelete

1. **Download SDelete:** Visit the [Sysinternals website](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete) to download the tool.

2. **Extract Files:** Save the files (SDelete.exe and SDelete.chm) to a convenient location, such as your Desktop or a dedicated folder like `C:\sysinternals`.

### Running SDelete in PowerShell

1. **Open PowerShell as Administrator:**

- Right-click the Start button and select "Windows PowerShell (Admin)".

2. **Navigate to SDelete Location:**

```powershell

cd C:\sysinternals

dir

```

3. **Access Help and Options:**

Run `.\SDelete.exe /?` to view available switches:

```

-C : Clean free space

-P : Specifies number of overwrite passes

-R : Remove read-only attribute from files

-S : Recurse into subdirectories

-Z : Zero-free-space (overwrites free space with zeros)

```

4. **Deleting Files and Folders:**

Use the following command to delete a folder and its contents:

```powershell

.\SDelete.exe -P 3 -R -S "E:\Secret"

```

- `-P 3`: Performs three overwrite passes.

- `-R`: Removes read-only attributes.

- `-S`: Recurses into subdirectories.

5. **Cleaning Free Space:**

To sanitize free space on a drive:

```powershell

.\SDelete.exe -C E:

```

6. **Zeroing Free Space:**

Overwrite free space with zeros for enhanced security:

```powershell

.\SDelete.exe -Z E:

```

### Using SDelete in Command Prompt

The process is similar to PowerShell, but you omit the `.\` before `SDelete.exe`.

1. **Open Command Prompt as Administrator:**

- Right-click Start and select "Command Prompt (Admin)".

2. **Navigate to SDelete:**

```cmd

cd C:\sysinternals

dir

```

3. **Run Commands:**

Use commands identical to those in PowerShell, omitting the `.\` prefix:

```cmd

SDelete.exe -P 3 -R -S "E:\Secret"

```

## Conclusion

Securely deleting files is essential for protecting sensitive information. SDelete offers a reliable and free method to achieve this using either PowerShell or Command Prompt. By following this guide, you can ensure your data remains inaccessible even after deletion. For further assistance, explore additional Sysinternals tools or visit the official Microsoft website.

Thank you for reading! If you found this guide helpful, consider subscribing to our channel for more valuable content and hitting the notification bell for future updates.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat you guys got another video here for you on how to securely and completely delete files in Windows 10 now we all know now we all know that files and directories when they're deleted go to the recycle bin and when you empty the recycle bin you may think that these files are actually gone from the computer but the way Windows has worked over the years it stalls these files so you can easily restore these with some sort of data recovery software and that is a really scary part especially if you're getting rid of a computer or you're given a computer away to someone you want to make sure that you securely erase all the data from that area or from the computer so let me just show you in this video how we're going to securely in completely delete files in Windows 10 the safe way using windows tools here so Esteli has been around for quite a while and it was made by a mark of russell vaq who at the time worked for himself but neal works for microsoft it's part of the sysinternals package which you can download for free and I'll show you how to use it it's very simple and easy to use and it's quite powerful you can see here you can do a bunch of stuff with it remove read and write only attributes you can clear free space you can specify and a number of over writes you want to use now I'll show you step by step on how to securely erase all of the data very easily with s delete it's a nice little tool to have on your system and it comes part as Windows you can just download it and drop it into your system32 folder if you wish or you can put it into the C root directory whatever you want to do so let me extract this to our desktop here and we'll extract it's just one simple file and it does have a you love which you can read a little bit later on but it's a from Microsoft so it's a safe file so you can see here this is the file and what we're going to do is we're going to drop this into a location now you will see two files estelí and s tallit 64 which is the 64 bit version which is the one we're using so I'm going to go into my C Drive and in create a folder inside my C root directory and we're going to call this sysinternals this is where you can put with your sis internal stuff he can drop it into the system 32 if you wish but I'm just gonna drop it inside here this is where I've always put them and I think it's a useful place to put them and store them so I'm going to put it in here I'm gonna call it sis internal so I know exactly what it is and of course they have other tools in there as well so if you want to see more videos on the tools they use or have then let me know in the comment section below let me just put capital S there okay then we can open this up and we can drag in our file there we go s delete exe that's in there and we're ready to rock and roll so let's go so I can delete these files now and we don't need those anymore now what I've got set up here is a drive itself you can have a USB Drive or it could be another volume which you've got set up and you can see I've got it as a a secret Drive which is the e Drive here and this will be where the documents are they mean inside a folder called secret and there's a bunch of files inside here and of course there's another folder another subdirectory inside there called stuff and it could be content in there too could week documents could be whatever you want to put in there and you may want to keep that secure and when you want to wipe it you can use this s delete to remove it you can see we got our sysinternals folder here without Esteli so it's right click on the start button and open up Windows PowerShell with administrative privileges there we go so now we've got our Box open here at command prompt box what we're going to do is put in our commands now this is PowerShell so we're going to do CD dot and this takes us back a directory and let's do the same again and it takes us back to our C root directory where we can then type dir you can now see we've got our sysinternals folder here so we're going to change our directory to that sysinternals folder very simple now we can type dir and we can now see we have our Esteli exe file inside there so we're in the right location here so what we need to do is give it a command to show us some of the commands that we can use so let's do dot backslash s delete and then we can do space forward slash question mark push enter and this will give you all of the switches which you can use for all the commands that will tell it what to do so you can see the C - C there is the clean free space - P is specifies the number of over writes you want to do - R will remove and read only attribute and we've got - s which will recur subdirectories and - Z which will zero free space I'll show you all of these and how they work disks must not have any volumes in order to be cleaned that's the way this program works says crack on and put in a command to clean something so let's go in and do our dot backslash s delete and this will tell it to run and now we need to put in a couple of little switches here so which we're going to call say - P and now we need to specify how many overwrite so we want to give it let's just do free and now we've can do 3 here and then we can do space and now we can give it another switch we can call this - R and this is gonna remove any read-only attribution - yes will recur so any subdirectories inside there so it will remove any subdirectories inside that folder and now we can do - Q if we wanted to run this quiet but we're not going to do that one we're gonna leave that one out and we're just gonna put in the location now our location is our E Drive so we need to make sure we're put in the ecole on inside there and this will actually tell it to wipe that location so we don't know what the whole Drive we want to just do that folder inside so we're gonna do e : backslash and then with the backslash we can then put our folder inside there which is our directory which is called secret so let's go ahead and put that in there and now we can push enter and then when we push enter this will go ahead and start secure racing all of that information inside there you can see it's been deleted this will be deleted and overwritten three times which will make it virtually impossible to recover that data you see it's now gone so that's how you can delete a folder and a subdirectory inside that folder so now we've done that what we can do is do the free space we can clean up the free space so we want to clean all the free space for the II drive so this is the whole drive which we have here so we're gonna run this command on here let's go ahead and show you the command for that one so again what we're gonna have to do is that we pull this up a bit we're gonna do the dot backslash s delete and this will tell it to run so we're just going to go ahead and do that so we'll type that out I'm trying to take it nice and slow so you can see what I'm doing here and also what we will need to do after we've done our s delete we will need to do a space and then - see now this is gonna tell it to basically clean up our free space on that drive so let's go ahead and do that so we're done - see and now we have to put in the drive letter which is what we want to do which is e colon and this will tell it to wipe the free space on our drive so let's go ahead and push enter here and this will take a bit of time depending on the size of the drive so this will go through and do one pass on that drive and it's cleaned all of that for us so that's all now been white and again we can do free passes if we wanted to so I'm going to go ahead and show you that one so we'll do it is exactly the same thing again but this time I'm just gonna add in the - P and then put in the amount of overwrite so I want to do so let's just put P free and then we're gonna do space ecole on and run that and you will see that it will basically give us free passes this time now you can see it's starting to do free passes and cleaning the free space on our drive e and it will dim purge all the MFT files on there which will make it impossible to recover data from that drive so you can see that's done a pretty good job at that so we've done one parse and three passes on that drive very simple easy to do now that will take up at a time if you've got a super large drive I've made a small volume there to make it nice and easy for us to want that drive so that's what we've done so let's do dot backslash s delete and then what would do here now is will zero the drive by doing the dash Z and this will zero the drive and we're going to do a colon and then let that run on one pass and zero that drive very simple and easier to do so it's free clean up the free space and zeroed the drive for us so that's a nice way to securely erase any sort of data folders files on your drive and it's pretty easy to do using the S delete now again you can see here we've run a bunch of different stuff on here this does also work in command prompt so if you do want to run it in command prompt you can do and you can see here the driver is now being cleaned let me quickly show you how to do in command prompt so you can use this seed CD dot so take you back a directory you can also use dir here and you can also use change directory to sysinternals exactly the same way but you don't do the dot backslash you won't have to do that inside command prompt you just type in the name of s delete so it'll be slightly different so we're just typing in Esteli here not dot backslash Esteli and then you can still use your little switches here P - P free for free over writes and then you can put in there eco Don so the only difference in the command is we're not using the dot backslash which we would use inside PowerShell inside the command prompt we're not using that would just put in the name of the file itself but that's basically it and it has the same effect by using it in command prompt or in PowerShell whatever way you want to do it very simple and easy it's a very powerful tool and a very useful tool to have on your Windows operating system anyway that's about it for this video that's how you can securely and completely erase or delete any files on your Windows 10 operating system my name has been Brian from bratok computers koto UK I shall see again for another video tomorrow bye for now now if you haven't subscribed yet hit the red subscribe button and hit the bell notification button and click all to be notified when we upload new videoswhat you guys got another video here for you on how to securely and completely delete files in Windows 10 now we all know now we all know that files and directories when they're deleted go to the recycle bin and when you empty the recycle bin you may think that these files are actually gone from the computer but the way Windows has worked over the years it stalls these files so you can easily restore these with some sort of data recovery software and that is a really scary part especially if you're getting rid of a computer or you're given a computer away to someone you want to make sure that you securely erase all the data from that area or from the computer so let me just show you in this video how we're going to securely in completely delete files in Windows 10 the safe way using windows tools here so Esteli has been around for quite a while and it was made by a mark of russell vaq who at the time worked for himself but neal works for microsoft it's part of the sysinternals package which you can download for free and I'll show you how to use it it's very simple and easy to use and it's quite powerful you can see here you can do a bunch of stuff with it remove read and write only attributes you can clear free space you can specify and a number of over writes you want to use now I'll show you step by step on how to securely erase all of the data very easily with s delete it's a nice little tool to have on your system and it comes part as Windows you can just download it and drop it into your system32 folder if you wish or you can put it into the C root directory whatever you want to do so let me extract this to our desktop here and we'll extract it's just one simple file and it does have a you love which you can read a little bit later on but it's a from Microsoft so it's a safe file so you can see here this is the file and what we're going to do is we're going to drop this into a location now you will see two files estelí and s tallit 64 which is the 64 bit version which is the one we're using so I'm going to go into my C Drive and in create a folder inside my C root directory and we're going to call this sysinternals this is where you can put with your sis internal stuff he can drop it into the system 32 if you wish but I'm just gonna drop it inside here this is where I've always put them and I think it's a useful place to put them and store them so I'm going to put it in here I'm gonna call it sis internal so I know exactly what it is and of course they have other tools in there as well so if you want to see more videos on the tools they use or have then let me know in the comment section below let me just put capital S there okay then we can open this up and we can drag in our file there we go s delete exe that's in there and we're ready to rock and roll so let's go so I can delete these files now and we don't need those anymore now what I've got set up here is a drive itself you can have a USB Drive or it could be another volume which you've got set up and you can see I've got it as a a secret Drive which is the e Drive here and this will be where the documents are they mean inside a folder called secret and there's a bunch of files inside here and of course there's another folder another subdirectory inside there called stuff and it could be content in there too could week documents could be whatever you want to put in there and you may want to keep that secure and when you want to wipe it you can use this s delete to remove it you can see we got our sysinternals folder here without Esteli so it's right click on the start button and open up Windows PowerShell with administrative privileges there we go so now we've got our Box open here at command prompt box what we're going to do is put in our commands now this is PowerShell so we're going to do CD dot and this takes us back a directory and let's do the same again and it takes us back to our C root directory where we can then type dir you can now see we've got our sysinternals folder here so we're going to change our directory to that sysinternals folder very simple now we can type dir and we can now see we have our Esteli exe file inside there so we're in the right location here so what we need to do is give it a command to show us some of the commands that we can use so let's do dot backslash s delete and then we can do space forward slash question mark push enter and this will give you all of the switches which you can use for all the commands that will tell it what to do so you can see the C - C there is the clean free space - P is specifies the number of over writes you want to do - R will remove and read only attribute and we've got - s which will recur subdirectories and - Z which will zero free space I'll show you all of these and how they work disks must not have any volumes in order to be cleaned that's the way this program works says crack on and put in a command to clean something so let's go in and do our dot backslash s delete and this will tell it to run and now we need to put in a couple of little switches here so which we're going to call say - P and now we need to specify how many overwrite so we want to give it let's just do free and now we've can do 3 here and then we can do space and now we can give it another switch we can call this - R and this is gonna remove any read-only attribution - yes will recur so any subdirectories inside there so it will remove any subdirectories inside that folder and now we can do - Q if we wanted to run this quiet but we're not going to do that one we're gonna leave that one out and we're just gonna put in the location now our location is our E Drive so we need to make sure we're put in the ecole on inside there and this will actually tell it to wipe that location so we don't know what the whole Drive we want to just do that folder inside so we're gonna do e : backslash and then with the backslash we can then put our folder inside there which is our directory which is called secret so let's go ahead and put that in there and now we can push enter and then when we push enter this will go ahead and start secure racing all of that information inside there you can see it's been deleted this will be deleted and overwritten three times which will make it virtually impossible to recover that data you see it's now gone so that's how you can delete a folder and a subdirectory inside that folder so now we've done that what we can do is do the free space we can clean up the free space so we want to clean all the free space for the II drive so this is the whole drive which we have here so we're gonna run this command on here let's go ahead and show you the command for that one so again what we're gonna have to do is that we pull this up a bit we're gonna do the dot backslash s delete and this will tell it to run so we're just going to go ahead and do that so we'll type that out I'm trying to take it nice and slow so you can see what I'm doing here and also what we will need to do after we've done our s delete we will need to do a space and then - see now this is gonna tell it to basically clean up our free space on that drive so let's go ahead and do that so we're done - see and now we have to put in the drive letter which is what we want to do which is e colon and this will tell it to wipe the free space on our drive so let's go ahead and push enter here and this will take a bit of time depending on the size of the drive so this will go through and do one pass on that drive and it's cleaned all of that for us so that's all now been white and again we can do free passes if we wanted to so I'm going to go ahead and show you that one so we'll do it is exactly the same thing again but this time I'm just gonna add in the - P and then put in the amount of overwrite so I want to do so let's just put P free and then we're gonna do space ecole on and run that and you will see that it will basically give us free passes this time now you can see it's starting to do free passes and cleaning the free space on our drive e and it will dim purge all the MFT files on there which will make it impossible to recover data from that drive so you can see that's done a pretty good job at that so we've done one parse and three passes on that drive very simple easy to do now that will take up at a time if you've got a super large drive I've made a small volume there to make it nice and easy for us to want that drive so that's what we've done so let's do dot backslash s delete and then what would do here now is will zero the drive by doing the dash Z and this will zero the drive and we're going to do a colon and then let that run on one pass and zero that drive very simple and easier to do so it's free clean up the free space and zeroed the drive for us so that's a nice way to securely erase any sort of data folders files on your drive and it's pretty easy to do using the S delete now again you can see here we've run a bunch of different stuff on here this does also work in command prompt so if you do want to run it in command prompt you can do and you can see here the driver is now being cleaned let me quickly show you how to do in command prompt so you can use this seed CD dot so take you back a directory you can also use dir here and you can also use change directory to sysinternals exactly the same way but you don't do the dot backslash you won't have to do that inside command prompt you just type in the name of s delete so it'll be slightly different so we're just typing in Esteli here not dot backslash Esteli and then you can still use your little switches here P - P free for free over writes and then you can put in there eco Don so the only difference in the command is we're not using the dot backslash which we would use inside PowerShell inside the command prompt we're not using that would just put in the name of the file itself but that's basically it and it has the same effect by using it in command prompt or in PowerShell whatever way you want to do it very simple and easy it's a very powerful tool and a very useful tool to have on your Windows operating system anyway that's about it for this video that's how you can securely and completely erase or delete any files on your Windows 10 operating system my name has been Brian from bratok computers koto UK I shall see again for another video tomorrow bye for now now if you haven't subscribed yet hit the red subscribe button and hit the bell notification button and click all to be notified when we upload new videos\n"