Greetings.
As my username implies, it has recently come to my attention Microsoft Windows keeps a hard to delete and (to an extent, as all things) permanent record of every website I visit, every URL I type, along with pictures and graphics taken from the pages I visit.
I see this in a negative light, in the sense some of my dealings on my computer should remain private. This applies to a wide array of things from my shopping preferences to private conversations with my girlfriend.
Because I didn`t want to put up with it, I used CCleaner to delete those files. I have re-formatted my computer a couple of times, the last of which in late October. I re-installed Windows but, when running Eraser to clean unused space on my drive, there`s a whole list of files it cannot delete. Among these are a whole batch of protected files and also some others like several index.dat and Mozilla Firefox history files.
My question is this these files I cannot delete, are they the ones from when before I re-installed Windows? After re-formatting, if I run Eraser to delete all unused disc space, do I get rid of all previous index.dat, Firefox history files, etc?
If not, how can I completely erase everything I had on the drive and start anew?
You would probably be better served asking questions about how Eraser functions on the Eraser forum.
DBAN is a useful tool that could serve the function you need. Available here http//
I'm not familiar with Eraser, but DBAN can be used to securely sanitize data on hard drives. After you reinstall, another thing worth considering is full disk encryption.