I f you are a computer user then at least once in your life you had felt to remove some data from your device. To remove data, mostly you had used the in-built delete function of your operating system (windows, Linux….etc.). But delete is not the only method to remove data from your hard-drive. There are other methods which are more effective if you want to remove some confidential data. Erase and wipe are the other methods. I will explain the difference between delete, Erase and Wipe one by one below:









Delete:

This is the in-built function of almost every operating system. Delete does not remove data from your hard-drive permanently. Even if you empty recycle- bin, your data will be present somewhere in your hard-disk. Basically, operating system gives an illusion to you that your data is not present on your hard-drive. You can also recover your deleted data by using different recovery software.

Erase:

Another method to remove data is Erase method. It is more effective than delete method. This method performs one pass 0’s overwriting your data. In simple words, it will change your data to a string of 0’s and then delete the data. There is an encapsulation in this method first 0’s are placed and then it is deleted.

Wipe:

The last method is wipe. Like a paper shredder, wipe method shred data. But how data can be shredded. Wipe method overwrites the existing data with 0’s just like erase method but the difference is that wipe replaces in random order. So it is almost impossible to recover wiped data unless NSA tries to recover data. If you are selling your device or want to delete some confidential data always use wipe method. Many software’s are available in the market that performs data wiping.





This was the difference between Delete, Erase and Wipe. Hope so you have found this article informative. If so then please share this information with your friends. Thank you!



