Erase folders in Win 7 with installed CIPHER proggie - command line tool

How to securely erase data with the Cipher tool You know that just deleting files doesn't erase them from the hard drive - they can be recovered by third party programs. You can also buy third party products that will securely and permanently erase the data, but did you know that you don't have to? There is a command line tool in Windows 7 that will do it for you. It's the Cipher command, and here's how it works: Open a command prompt with eleva-ted privileges by right clicking cmd.exe and selecting "Run as Administrator." At the prompt, type cipher /w drive:\folder, substituting the drive letter and folder path for "drive" and "folder." For example, to erase the contents of a folder named "Secrets" in the Documents folder of a user named Bob on the C: drive, you would type cipher /w C:\ Users \ Bob \ Documents \ Secrets This operation overwrites the selected files with 1s, 0s and random characters.