Computer enthusiasts have been using file shredders to delete files for many years. Sysinternals makes a very cool utility called “SDelete” that “shreds” a file

See below for batch file code snippet to use with SDelete. Add to your “User/Administrator/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo” (In Vista/7/Serv08) or “Documents and Settings\%username%\SendTo” (In XP).

(%APPDATA% environment variable actually points to “C:\users\\AppData\Roaming”)

I have modified the code below from it’s original source on blog (see references) to 3 passes instead of four. See wikipedia page for more information on data remanence. If the script runs slow on your system consider decreasing this to 3 or 4.


@echo off
:START
if "%~f1"=="" (
echo No more args given. Done.
exit /b 0
)
:WORK
ECHO Y| cacls %1 /T /C /G Administrators:F
attrib -h -s -r -a %1 /S /D
attrib -h -s -r -a %1\*.* /S /D
sdelete -p 7 -s -q %1
:NEXTARG
shift
goto START


Addendum 2012.11.09
Windows 7 environment path seems to be buggy at times. Absolute references to executables is more reliable.

@echo off
:START
if "%~f1"=="" (
echo No more args given. Done.
exit /b 0
)
:WORK
ECHO Y| C:\Windows\System32\cacls.exe %1 /T /C /G Administrators:F
C:\Windows\System32\attrib.exe -h -s -r -a %1 /S /D
C:\Windows\System32\attrib.exe -h -s -r -a %1\*.* /S /D
C:\Windows\System32\sdelete.exe -p 7 -s -q %1
:NEXTARG
shift
goto START

Note:
Any snippets may have been condensed from their original sources for brevity. See references for original articles.

All server side code examples are in C# .Net.

References
Sysinternals, Blog: “My Handy sdelete scripts”, Soulstace, http://forum.sysinternals.com/my-handy-sdelete-scripts_topic6065.html
Wikipedia, “Data Remanance”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence
HowToGeek, http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/customize-the-windows-vista-send-to-menu/