Totally erase your files

Have you ever encountered the situation where you want to trade-in your laptop, and wish that you can wipe out all the data such that it cannot be retrieved? Actually, there is a hidden command in WinXP that allows you to do that. It's called cipher.

Cipher has many options and one of the options is /W. This is a snapshot of the help provided by cipher:
/W Removes data from available unused disk space on the entire
volume. If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored.
The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume. If it
is a mount point or points to a directory in another volume, the
data on that volume will be removed.

My layman translation is that it will entirely wipe out all the data in the free space you have currently in the drive containing the directory specified. For example, if you have specified C:\Temp, it will make sure that all the free space in your Drive C will be wiped out.

However, if your C:\Temp points to another drive, it will wipe out the other drive's free space instead. This however, I have not tried. I have also not tried wiping out Drive D for example, so I'm not sure if my translation is correctly.

Do note that when you're running the command, close all your other applications. It may take some time as it does the following to your free space in the drive:

• Write Hex 00 to every free space
• Write Hex FF to every free space
• Write random numbers to every free space

To run the command, please do the following:

1. Goto Start > Run
2. Type cmd
3. Type cipher /W: (e.g. cipher /W:C:\Temp)

That's all to it. Just leave it there and it will make sure your free space is really free space. :)
Hope this helps...