FileVac 2.40 is a utility that provides the ability to completely clean deleted files and "deleted space" on your hard drive and on floppy disks as well. Filevac also allows you to securely delete individual files and entire folders and all of their subfolders so as to render them completely unrecoverable.

When FileVac kills a file or folder, any "slack space" at the end of files are removed as well and all destroyed entries are "zeroed out," destroying the selected filenames and folder names and causing them to be set to zero length as they are removed. By using FileVac, you can ensure that everything you've deleted is gone for good, incapable of being recovered.

FileVac uses the same file destruction technology that has been incorporated into our NSClean and IEClean browser managers in order to let you extend this capability to any files or folders anywhere on your system with destruction standards ranging from single wipe to a level of destruction that far exceeds the most stringent national security recommendations. Up to 256 passes can be specified for cleanups during disk wipe operations although no one in their right mind would ever want to do this.

FileVac provides a number of ways to allow you to destroy files and entire folders beyond recovery and ensure that none of the data can ever be recovered. Filevac allows you to clean floppies, hard disks, rewriteable CDROMs or any other writeable media. FileVac also gives you the option of a cleaning which reverts the media back to its original "just formatted" emptiness or you can opt for a number of advanced destruction methods beyond the one-pass cleanup offered by default.

FileVac can be run as a desktop icon which you can drag files and folders to for a complete wiping, you can set it up to allow the "context menu" (when you right click the mouse on a file or folder) to offer FileVac right there or you can even operate FileVac silently from a DOS command line or batch file using FileVac in "command line mode."

When setup as a desktop icon, we recommend placing the FileVac icon on top of the "recycle bin" so that you can drag files or folders there and drop them into FileVac. You will see the vacuum bag fill up and explode to indicate a successful removal of the file or folder. If for some reason the file or folder cannot be deleted, a red hand will appear in a "thumbs down" pose to indicate that the file cannot be removed because it is locked, in use or is not a real file or folder that can be deleted.

Deleting files or folders can be accomplished in the "context menu" by simply right clicking the mouse on a file or folder you wish to remove. You will see "FileVac file" or "FileVac folder"as an option depending on whether the selected item is a file or a folder. When you select this, FileVac will run and trash the file or folder you have selected. Be careful though, once you've selected "FileVac" on the context menu, the data is being removed completely. You will not be able to recover it, so please be careful when you are using the context menu to access FileVac.

Disk wiping is accomplished by doubleclicking on the desktop icon. When you do this, it will bring up the disk wiping screen after a short pause during which FileVac will check all of your drives (including floppies and CDROMs) for the amount of "deleted space" in need of cleaning plus an estimation of how long a cleanup will take for any particular drive.

When a disk wipe is performed, all disk space that's not in use with files will be cleaned and reformatted depending on the options selected in the configuration screen. A checkbox marked "Shut Down" is provided on the wiping screen. If you check this, you can leave FileVac running unattended and when it has completed the disk wipe operation, FileVac will automatically shut off your machine if this checkbox is checked. If you need to pause for any reason, simply click on the FileVac screen and it will pause the cleanup. Click on the OK button in the "paused" box continues the wiping. Once a wipe is in progress, we do not provide a means to stop the wiping until the entire process is completed in order to prevent file damage. Please make note of the estimated time to ensure you have enough time to allow it to complete before you hit the wipe button.

NOTE: For best results, optimize the disk before wiping and if you are very concerned about making sure your disk is empty, optimize again after you have done a disk wipe. FileVac maintains a record of when each disk was last wiped for your information. For normal use though, just a wiping is sufficient to ensure that no files or folders can be recovered with modern hard drives. Floppy disks are candidates for multiple wipes as there are methods by which data destroyed by a single wipe could be recovered using electron microscopy. This isn't a great concern for hard disks.

FileVac deletion specifications:

• NORMAL MODE This is the default disk wipe mode and is designed for modern hard disks of 540 Megabytes or larger. When selected, this will clean the deleted file space in one single "pass." The space where data once existed will be cleaned and the disk surface will be reformatted, leaving the cleaned space completely empty. Old file and folder entries will also be removed and zeroed out. This leaves the disk as clean as when it was new and contained no data at all. This will not harm any existing files nor will any of the more advanced options presented below.
  
• SECURE MODE Recommended for routine hard disk restoration where reuse is desired. This is a two-pass process (FileVac needs to run through the entire surface of the disk twice). The first pass will write random characters to the disk to obliterate old data and the second pass will reformat the empty space similar to what is done in "normal mode." This will also make recovery of data much more difficult on older, sloppier drives.
• DOD 5220.22-M This is the recommended disk wipe by the United States Department of Defense for NON-CLASSIFIED data, an improvement over the original DOD 5220-STD standard of years ago known as the "Norton G-switch" disk wipe. In this FOUR pass mode, a pass of random data is written, on the second pass a "complement" is written (in other words if the bit pattern of the first random pass is 0011001100 then the "complement" would be 1100110011 to ensure that regardless of how a hard drive writes data, it will be obliterated. On the third pass, another random track is written on top of the other two and finally a fourth pass consisting of the "reformat" mode of our "normal mode" finishes the cleanup with four passes total. This is acceptable for all hard disks and floppy disks for an unrecoverable cleanup.
• GUTMANN STD This is an elaborate method of disk wiping that requires 16 passes to complete. It consists of multiple random and complement wipes per pass followed by the "reformat" pass as the last pass. For more information on the Gutmann disk wiping recommendations, visit:
  
  http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
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  There have been claims made that Guttman standard wipes require 32 passes. Thirty-two is the actual number of individual passes FileVac will perform in this mode, however as they are complimentary, we consider the "pair" as one pass.

• CUSTOM An extension to the Gutmann method allows you to specify the number of random and complement passes you desire up to 255. Be advised though that such overkill is completely unnecessary but customers have requested that we make this feature available. The last wipe is the "reformat" wipe we recommend. The small arrows next to the number of wipes box will allow you to set the number of wipes desired. This method can take a large amount of time to complete, especially when a large number of passes is desired.
  
  
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