Windows Delete File Securely / Permanently Delete File Data

To securely and permanently delete file data on Windows, you can use the built-in cipher utility. Here are the steps to do so:

1. Open the Command Prompt as an administrator.
2. Navigate to the directory that contains the file(s) you want to delete.
3. Type the following command to securely delete a single file:
   cipher /w:filename


   Replace “filename” with the name of the file you want to delete.

   If you want to securely delete all the files in the current directory, you can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character:

   cipher /w:*

4. Press Enter to execute the command.
5. Windows will now overwrite the file data with random characters, making it much more difficult to recover the original data.

Note that this process may take some time, especially for large files or directories. Additionally, once you have used the cipher utility to securely delete data, there is no way to recover it.