Digital camera memory is an essential part of digital photography equipment. Generally, Digital cameras internal memory does not support storing huge amount of pictures/videos, thus the digital camera memory cards are utilized. These memory cards store all the pictures and videos taken with the digital camera. If your card is full of capacity and when you need more space you can delete erase/delete pictures from it. On the other hand if your digital camera performance becomes sluggish, you can format the memory card. However, a memory card should be formatted several times a year for good performance.

Erasing/deleting images or just formatting the memory card, does not actually delete the data on it. If you are planning to get rid of your digital camera or memory card, you will need to permanently delete the images on it. Remo Shredder can help you shred files from a digital camera memory card beyond recovery. REMO Shredder will completely erase files from your memory card, without the possibility of recovery by any practical software or hardware methods. Select the data you wish to shred, select your shred standard and the data is gone forever.

Step-by-step guide on how to shred files from digital camera memory card

Step 1: Launch the Remo Shredder either by selecting the program from the Start Menu, or by double clicking on the desktop shortcut. Once the REMO Shredder software is launched, it starts loading the drives on the left tree pane, as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Application main window

Step 2: Select the memory card that contains the file(s) to be shredded. After selecting the files to be shredded, double click on them to add them into the ’shredding zone’ or drag and drop them into the shredding zone. The application adds the selected file(s) into shredding zone as shown in Figure b.

Figure b: Selected data in Shredding zone

Step 3: Remo Shredder utility provides nine shredding methods and they are classified into different levels for erasing the data which are based on the security patterns. To select the shredding methods, click on the “Shredding Options” button in the toolbar. This drops down the different shredding methods, and the user has to select any one of these methods, as shown in Figure c.

Figure c: Shredding Methods

Step 4: Once you select the shredding method, click on the Shred file(s) and folder(s) button. As you click on Shred file(s) and folder(s) button, all the selected file(s) and folder(s) in the shredding zone will be overwritten by different pattern depending on shredding method selected and once the process is completed a message would pop up intimating the same.

The data once erased with Remo Shredder cannot be recovered back using any data recovery software.

Yes, you get such option with Remo File Shredder where you can schedule shredding process to run at specified time. If you want certain files or folders to be shredded regularly/ at specified time, then they can be added in the task list in scheduler and time and date can be specified so that those files/folders can be shredded at set time and date.

Follow as explained below to set the Scheduler:

Application main window of Remo File Shredder is as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Application Main Window

To set the scheduler, click on Shredding options button from the Tool bar or you can also choose this option from Tools Menu->Shredding options. Once you click on Shredding options button, you get a window as shown in Figure b.

Figure b: Shredding Options

Shredding options are listed on the left hand side of the window, select Scheduler from the list. As you click on Scheduler option, you get Scheduler Window as shown in Figure c.

Figure c: Scheduler

Click on ‘Add file(s) or ‘Add folder(s) to add files and folders to scheduler’s task list. Once you add file(s)/ folder(s), you need to schedule the time for shredding process. You can schedule the shredding process for a specific date and time, or you can schedule it to run at start up. Click on OK button after configuring the scheduler settings.

If you want to remove any files and folders that have been added from this list then select the required file/folder and click Remove button. Then the file/folder would be removed from the scheduler list.

If you do not want to set the scheduler, you can also disable the scheduler. To do that just check Disable Scheduler option and click Ok button as shown in Figure d.

Figure d: Window to Disable Scheduler

Whether the file is deleted, Windows operating system does not delete that file permanently. Instead the allocation area or the index of the file system (FAT or NTFS) marks the area used by the deleted file as empty. But the actual raw contents of the file always exist even if the file has been deleted and waits for overwriting by the operating system. Deleted file, which is not overwritten, can be easily recovered.

In order to ensure that your deleted files are erased forever, a file shredder should be used which permanently erases the files from the storage devices. One such utility is Remo Shredder which helps you to shred files and folders from Windows drive, it shreds the deleted data leaving no traces of sensitive/critical data.

Remo Shredder presents a hierarchical explorer view to select file and folders to shred. Simply add the files to “shredding zone” and select the shredding patterns and the software would start data destruction beyond recovery.

Shredding patterns offered by Remo Shredder exceeds the standards of DOD US and offers 9 Shredding standards.

Erasing the files beyond recovery

Remo Shredder offers safe erasing of data beyond recovery by overwriting the data several times based on the shredding method selected.

Follow the steps mentioned below to use Remo Shredder to securely erase your data.

Step – 1
Remo Shredder has an intuitive interface that helps even a non technical person to use the software to erase their sensitive data. As soon as the application is launched, it starts loading the drives in the left tree pane. The main window of Remo Shredder is as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Application Main Window

  
Step – 2
Once the logical drives are loaded, select a drive that has file(s)/folder(s) having sensitive data to be shredded beyond recovery. All the contents of the drive would be listed in the right pane of application main window. Select those file(s)/folder(s) that need to be shredded and click to add them into ’shredding zone’ or drag and drop them to shredding zone. The application adds the selected file(s) and folder(s) into shredding zone as shown in Figure b.

Figure b: Selected data in Shredding zone

  
Step – 3
Once you select the data you wish to permanently erase, click Shred file(s) and folder(s) button listed in the tool bar, to shred the file(s) / folder(s) listed in shredding zone.

  
Step – 4
As you click on Shred file(s) and folder(s) button, all the selected file(s) and folder(s) in the shredding zone will be overwritten by different pattern depending on shredding method selected and once the process is completed a message would pop up intimating this.

The data once erased using Remo File Shredder cannot be recovered back using any data recovery software.

Shredding Methods

To select shredding methods, select Shredding Options either from the toolbar or from the Tools menu and select Shredding methods option. This would drop down the shredding methods that can be used to shred the data beyond recovery as shown in Figure c

Figure c: Shredding Methods

Remo Shredder utility provides nine shredding methods and they are classified into different levels for erasing the data which are based on the security patterns

Low Security Shredding methods/ patterns

• Fast Zero Overwrite
• Random Overwrite
• US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M)
• US Navy, NAVSO P-5239-26 – RLL

Medium Security Shredding methods/ patterns

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO standard
• German:VSITR
• DOD Standard 5220.28 STD

High Security Shredding methods/ patterns

• Peter Guttmann Secure Deletion
• US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M) + Guttmann Method

Remo Shredder overwrites the data with selected method several times. If low security pattern is used to erase the data then there are chances that the recovery could be done by hardware specialists who can read off the disk and get the data back with a pattern of bits. High security shredding methods are bit complicated. They overwrite the data with selected patterns several times that makes the data impossible to recover.

In order to ensure that the files deleted using Remo File Shredder is not recoverable run the demo version of REMO Undelete software.