HDShredder

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on January 19, 2010

HDShredder from Miray Software is a disk cleaning utility that comes in five versions, each building upon the other's basic functionality with more features, capacity, or levels of security. We tested the Free version, which is more than adequate for most users' data removal needs. It offers secure high-speed deletion of entire hard drives or other storage media to the point that any data they contain is unrecoverable, independent of your operating system, file system, or partition layout. It also recognizes and deletes proprietary formatting that other cleaners often miss.

HDShredder Free downloads as a compressed file but installs cleanly and without issues or further nuisance. It opens with an attractive and fairly sparse dialog box that's typical of the cleaner genre, whether it's your hard disk, registry, or browser files it's cleaning. HDShredder Free essentially sheds most of the features and settings of its for-pay siblings, but its core functionality is the same. It's limited to security level 1 while the Enterprise version offers level 217, for instance, and while it recognizes and shows all supported drives, some less typical formats require more advanced versions. Nevertheless, HDShredder Free completely deleted our target files.

HDShredder Free is as capable and effective a disk cleaner as most users need. Since it's freeware, you have nothing to lose but the files you've already deleted. If you're selling, donating, or even throwing away an old computer or hard drive, run HDShredder on it first. Your security is no one's business but your own.