How does Secure Erase work?

Answer by  RichardSL (18)

Secure erase works by writing to the disk multiple times over. With normal erase, the data may not be written over even once, leaving it all on the disk and only deleting the file systems references to the particular data. With secure erase, the file system references are removed and the data is also physically written over.

Answer by  secuser (8)

Secure erase works by writing zeroes and ones repeatedly over the section of the disk where the data or file was previously located. This makes it harder to "undelete". Some government standards stipulate how many times that the section needs to re-written, varying from 3 to 7 times.

Answer by  sweeneydjg (87)

Secure erasing files typically is more effective than just Recycle Bin deletion because it will rewrite the file multiple times on the hard-drive, which, unlike recycle bin, will not leave any file behind like recycle bin does. Also, will usually make the file completely unrecoverable, even by government or police detectives.

Answer by  Peter1563 (265)

A secure erase actually overwrites the data in question; normally a deleted file is still there and will only be overwritten the next time something happens to be saved there.