Active@ KillDisk 24

The program scans drives, shows existing and deleted folders, previews and wipes any drive clusters. All process and errors are logged and saved in XML file format. Read/write retry attempts, SMTP settings configuration, command line, and email notifications are supported. The app works with IDE, ATA, SATA, eSATA, SSD, SCSI hard drives, floppies, ZIP drives, USB external devices.

Active@ KillDisk is intended to preserve the privacy of your data by wiping disk contents beyond the possibility of recovering them by any means. The tool has a fairly easy to use interface, but it is good to alert inexperienced users that they should use it with caution, due to the evident possibility of accidentally deleting important data. The program supports such storage media as HDD, SSD, and USB.

Active@ KillDisk scans your system and shows all available partitions, which includes those that are hidden or reserved by the system. The contents of each partition are shown in a tree style, quite similar to the system’s file manager. Likewise, the program can detect unused space, which is very important because there is always the possibility that deleted files are still recoverable from there.

The tool supports two main kinds of actions, called Wipe and Erase. In this respect, you should be aware that they are quite different. On the one hand, wiping refers to securely deleting whatever data may be left on the unused space. On the other, erasing means deleting the selected files or folders or even the entire disk and it has the advantage of removing even the boot sector.

The irrevocability of data removal mainly depends on the strength of the sanitizing standard used. Luckily, Active@ KillDisk supports more than 20 methods, which are internationally recognized because of their reliability. In this respect, DoD 5220.22-M is, fortunately, one of them.

The product includes other valuable features. For instance, it can examine disks to detect bad sectors and use S.M.A.R.T. information to provide you with a report about their health. Since you cannot wipe the partition where the operating system resides, it is very convenient that the program can create a bootable media that you can use to erase data from the active partition. Moreover, it lets you save a lot of time by allowing batch operations on a group of disks. Finally, complete automation can be achieved by means of combining batch mode and command-line operations.

In general, Active@ KillDisk is definitely among the best tools of its type and, consequently, it deserves a try. On this point, there is, fortunately, a free edition for home use; however, it has the big limitation of supporting One Pass Zeros erase method only. In addition to this free version, there are other types of licenses for home, business and enterprise purposes. So, it is advisable to visit the developer’s site and read the feature comparison available there.