Wipe unallocated disk space in Windows and clean or rename file in directory structures

Question

I want a way to clean free space in Windows once I delete the data, so that:

The files are no longer recoverable by any disk recovery tools
The file names are no longer visible in any disk recovery tools

For the purpose of this task, I have tried using Cipher /w after deleting all the required file. But when I opened disk drill (recovery tool), it was able to see the file names in the underlying disk. Although they were no longer recoverable, I still want to make sure that they are not visible in the disk.

I also tried SDelete to no avail. I was still able to see the underlying file names and folder structures.

Note: I did not delete files or folders using SDelete, I only used it for cleaning the empty disk space later.

I saw a few threads with respect to this discussion, but none of them provided a direct answer. It would be great if someone can help.

cipher.exe does not remove file info (name, size, folder structure etc) from the Master File Table, but it does erase the actual file's data. You want a different kind of "erase" tool that checks the MFT (though these are often very slow): https://superuser.com/questions/816152/deleting-file-names-from-mft — Cpt.Whale, Sep 15 '23 at 21:45
Does this answer your question? Deleting file names from MFT — DrMoishe Pippik, Sep 15 '23 at 21:49
You could simply reformat the disk, and this will reinitialize the file-table. — harrymc, Sep 16 '23 at 12:30
@harrymc I want to preserve other data on the disk. It is to selectively delete stuff on drive and make sure no traces remain. — K N, Sep 18 '23 at 16:58

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 18 '23 at 18:55

You wish to clean out the deleted file names from the MFT, for which you need a third-party tool.

One such tool is the free Prevent Recovery. With it you can either erase the free space or the deleted file-entries in the MFT, or both.

You may find a description of the tool in the article Prevent Recovery Overwrites Free Space on Hard Drives.

Note that for a large disk this operation may take a long time.

Here is the most relevant screenshot :

Another tool that can clean the MFT and the disk is CCleaner.

See the description in the article How to Clean MFT (Master File Table) on NTFS Drives.

Wipe unallocated disk space in Windows and clean or rename file in directory structures

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