Window Washer 6.0 Online Manual

Adding Bleach

You can make your washes more secure by adding "bleach." The bleach overwrites each file that Window Washer deletes with random characters. You cannot recover bleached files using an undelete or unerase program.

You can select the number of times that bleach overwrites the files. The more times that you overwrite the files, the longer it will take for the wash to run.

Note: Using the bleach settings may slow down the wash process significantly, depending on how many files you are washing and the speed of your computer.

You can wash file slack space to remove parts of old files. For more information, see Washing File Slack Space.

You can also use Window Washer to delete any file or folder more securely using Windows Explorer. For more information, see Shredding Files and Folders.

To add bleach:

Start Window Washer, if it is not already open, and display the Window Washer window.
For more information, see Starting Window Washer.
In the icon panel, click Options.
The Options panel displays.
Click the Bleach Settings tab.
The Bleach Settings tab displays.
Select Yes, to the right of Would You Like to Add Bleach?
Select the bleaching option you want.

Click to see a description of each option.

Option	Description
DOD 5220.22-M	Overwrites each deleted file 3 times with random characters in accordance with the US Department of Defense (DOD) 5220.22-M directive.
NSA	Overwrites each deleted file 7 times with random characters based on the US National Security Agency (NSA) guidelines.
Gutmann	Overwrites each deleted file 35 times using different patterns each time. This overwrite process is based on a 1996 paper by Peter Gutmann, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland.
Random	Overwrites each deleted file as many times you select with random characters. Remember that the more overwrite passes you select, the longer the wash will take.