These instructions will help you get the most out of your EraseData software.
Before you begin using EraseData, you need to understand a few key concepts:
Why do you need EraseData? Because deleting and erasing are not the same thing.
Deleting: You have been deleting files all along. It's not good enough. Why? Because deleting a file doesn't actually make it go away.
Think of your computer as a huge book. Every file is a chapter. When you delete a chapter, your computer doesn't really remove it from the book. That's too much work. Instead, it just removes all of the references to your chapter – scratches it out of the Table of Contents and Index. But the chapter itself stays behind. Why does this matter? Because there is very simple software that can find these old chapters and expose them.
Erasing: Following the same analogy, when you erase a chapter (file), you pull out all of the pages and shred them. You destroy all traces of the chapter.
The important thing to remember is that your computer cannot erase files. It will only delete them. Even if you empty your Trash or Recycle Bin.
You sometimes see "erasing" referred to as wiping. It's really the same thing. In EraseData, "wiping" means erasing an entire drive.
A computer can have many drives. One of those is the "primary drive" or the main drive on your computer – the place where your operating system is.
EraseData can't erase the computer's main drive while it's in use. So erasing a "computer" is a slightly different process than erasing other things. But rest assured, EraseData can do both.
A wipe is when you erase an entire drive.
In EraseData, you can erase all of the files and folders you want, without limitation. But there's a limit to how many full-drive "wipes" you can do. You can see how many wipes you have remaining on the Home screen of EraseData.