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ZDELETE AUTO-CLEANER AND DISK WIPER

This chapter gives an overview of ZDelete Auto-Cleaner.

ZDelete Auto-Cleaner Basics

ZDelete Auto-Cleaner is a security manager consisting of a personal item-removal profile, designed to restrict unwanted access to your private data. It allows you to define specific hard drive areas and clean them up on a regular basis. You can schedule periodical runs of Auto-Cleaner using standard Windows Scheduler (see Scheduling ZDelete Auto-Cleaner).

A personal item-removal and disk-wiping profile consists of a list of named system folders and custom items (files and patterns) and data residue you want to destroy. Use ZDelete Wizard steps 2 and 3 to create the profile and configure options.

The ZDelete Auto-Cleaner command automatically removes all items in your profile so that recovering these files becomes impossible. (see the explanation, later in this chapter).

ZDelete Auto-Cleaner appears as a toolbar button in Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.0 and above).

Note: If your Internet Explorer toolbar has been customized, ZDelete Auto-Cleaner icon will not appear by default. It can be easily added from the list of available buttons in the Customize Toolbar dialog, or by clicking Reset in the same dialog screen.

How To Use ZDelete Auto-Cleaner

Use the ZDelete Wizard to create a item-removal profile for Auto-Cleaner. Once created, there are several ways to run ZDelete Auto-Cleaner for cleaning up your profile:

• Choose menu item ZDelete Auto-Cleaner from the Windows Start menu

• Press [Ctrl + Alt + Z] key combination that is associated with shortcut in Windows Start menu

• Click ZDelete Auto-Cleaner toolbar icon in Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.0 and above)

• In Windows, double-click the ZDELETE.EXE file from the folder where you installed software

After Auto-Cleaner starts you will see a Windows graphical user interface (GUI) or a DOS console list of activities depending on the way you run the command. With the Windows interface, you can interact with the program (see ZDelete for Windows Explorer Basics in Chapter 5.

Figure 3-1 Windows Interface and DOS Interface Screens

If you started Auto-Cleaner using the GUI, you will see the list of items, as defined in ZDelete Wizard (both Custom Items and System Folders), and you can edit the selection profile for this particular run before engaging the utility.

Scheduling ZDelete Auto-Cleaner

Use Windows Scheduling utility to program ZDelete Auto-Cleaner to run with or without user interaction.

Wizard Scheduling

1. Start ZDelete Wizard and advance the screens to Step 5 by clicking Next.
2. Click Run Scheduler. The Schedule screen appears.
3. In the Schedule tab, set start time and frequency if needed.
4. Click the Task tab. The path to ZDELETE.EXE appears automatically in the Run field, including the CLEAR parameter.
   
   Figure 3-2 ZDelete Wizard Run Scheduler
   
   

   
   

5. When all parameters are set, click OK in this screen to complete Wizard Scheduling.

Windows Scheduling

1. In Windows Control Panel, double-click Scheduled Tasks.
2. Double-click Add New Scheduled Task.
3. Navigate to indicate the full path to Auto-Cleaner's program name ( ZDELETE.EXE) in Job's Properties.
4. Optionally, specify the command line parameter CLEAR.
5. Specify the schedule indicating frequency and time.
6. In Windows NT and Windows 2000, specify Run As parameters. For more details on scheduling configuring options, see Using Task Scheduler in Microsoft Windows Help.

Regarding the CLEAR Parameter

When scheduling, you can choose ZDELETE.EXE to start Auto-Cleaner with or without the parameter CLEAR.

The table below outlines the various options for CLEAR:

Table 3-1 Options for CLEAR Setting

ZDelete Disk Wiper Basics

ZDelete Disk Wiper is a secure utility that allows you to wipe all free space on a drive making it impossible to recover previously deleted files.

Wiping the drive does NOT delete existing files on it, but makes it impossible to recover any previously deleted file, even when using data recovery tools. In other words, areas on the hard disk, that are not occupied by currently existing files, are cleared of data residue that may still exist.

If you have been using the Windows delete command, prior to installing ZDelete, your drives will contain data residue from previously deleted files. These files can easily be restored by someone using a data recovery utility. If you are dealing with secure or sensitive data, it is better to run Disk Wiper on all drives to secure deleted files. Once this process is complete, it will be impossible for anybody to restore any document deleted before you started using ZDelete and your privacy will be protected.

Use the ZDelete Wizard (Step 4) to define a set of drives to be wiped when you run ZDelete Auto-Cleaner either manually or as a scheduled task.

Using ZDelete Disk Wiper

Access ZDelete Disk Wiper for setup in one of several ways:

• In Windows Explorer, right-click the selected drive and execute ZDelete Disk Wiper command from the context menu (see figure below).
  
  Figure 3-3 Starting ZDelete in Explorer
  
  
  

• In Windows Explorer, click a drive to select it. Execute ZDelete Disk Wiper command from the File drop-down menu.

After the standard confirmation dialog, the wiping process is started. A progress screen appears and you can watch the progress. Cancel the operation at any time with the [Esc] key.

After wiping the drive's empty spaces, Disk Wiper cleans the root directory to remove the names of deleted files.

Depending on the size of the hard drive, Disk Wiping may be a long process, however it gives you guaranteed results.

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