User Guide

User’s Guide 125
McAfee Utilities
• D rag the key or keys you want to remove from the bottom pane of
the window, to the top of the pane.
5. Click OK.
McAfee Shredder
When you save a fil e in Windows, it is st ored in multiple pieces (in clusters
made up of multiple sectors) on the disk. Windows also saves a roadmap, or
index, that points to these clusters in two copies of the FAT (File A llocation
Table). The FAT contains the d irections to all the pieces of your files, so that
applications can find them again later.
Whe n you delete a f ile, all the inf ormat ion stored in tha t f ile is not actually
erased from your disk. Instead, Windows simply frees the clusters where the
file was stored, making those locations available in the FAT. T hereafter,
applications can write new information to those clusters. This means that all
or part of yourfiles can bereco nstructed evenaft er you deletethem. Undelete
programs can reconstruct a de leted file very easily, especially im mediately
after you delete the f ile and bef ore you save any new information that might
be w r itten ov er the deleted fil e’s c ontents.
For privacy and security reasons, you may want to be positive that the
information s tored in file s you delete is permanently e rased fro m your
computer. McAfee S hr edder does this for you by “s ecurity wiping” deleted
files so they cannot be restor ed or rebuilt using undelete utilities. Unlike other
file security erase programs, M cAfee Shredder er ases ev en the file name and
thecompresseddataonDriveSpacedrives.Notethatitisnotpossibletoshred
networkfiles, orfilescompressed with compression other thanDriveSpace in
an absolutely secure manner.
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TIP:You canselectMcAfeeShredderpropertiestospecifytheshredding
level to perform. You can select Quick, whichshreds the information
once, or U.S. G overnment Multipass, wh ich makes seven pas ses of
repeatedly erasing the data.
Shredding selected files
You ca n shred files using drag and drop, whic h is a fast way if all the files are
centrally located. Or if the files are in several places, you can shred them by
starting McAfee Sh redder and selectin g the files to erase.