I am a business that is selling to a competitor.  I need to
permenately clean several pc's harddrives and particular files without
leaving a trace of the deletion activities.  i.e. I need to shred
files such as MS Office files, without a forensic software tool being
able to detect the date and time of the cleaning process.  Please
provide name of software and experience with such software.

dh-ga,


I believe the software called Eraser should fully meet your needs for
permanent, non-recoverable deletion of either select files or entire
drives:


http://heidi.ie/eraser/
Eraser Version 5.8 


And for icing on the cake...it's free!


The actual download page for the software is here:


http://heidi.ie/eraser/download.php
Eraser 5.8
For Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP


The Eraser line of secure deletion software is very highly regarded. 
You can read a recent article on it here:


http://www.dx21.com/HOME/ARTICLES/PR/PRODREV.ASP?CID=22


which refers to this program as one of the best available.


I believe that Eraser will delete your files without leaving traces of
its own activity, in terms of date and time of erasure.

HOWEVER, I am not a computer security professional, and as the
disclaimer below notes, Google Answers is not a substitute for
professional advice.

That said, though, I think Eraser will do what you need.  But if you
have any questions -- or need more information -- just let me know by
posting a Request for Clarification.

All the best,

pafalafa-ga


search strategy -- Answer is based on my knowledge of security software

Why would a competitor care about when the files are deleted?  The
only party who I can think of who might care about this would be law
enforcement or the SEC or such.

worset comes to worste, yank the computers battery while it is
unplugged then run an eraser utility that runs from a bootable advice.
 This way, the computer's internal clock will have no setting (or will
revert to some time several years ago depending on the MOBO/Bios)

I have to echo Nelson's comments here.  This sounds highly suspicous. 
The courts would definately care to know when files were deleted or
that they were deleted at all, as it would constitute evidence
tampering.  I can't see how anyone else would care.  Be advised that
they can put you away for a long time for evidence tampering, if the
case you are tampering with is very serious.

re frank/nelson comments

Sure there are reasons why you should not erase data deemed evidence
of criminal conduct.

On the other hand there are legal reasons why you should erase data
securely, eg for reasons of IPR or client confidentiality or
personal/commercial data protection. I cannot see anything wrong in
this request.

Sorry, on what grounds are you saying this is "highly suspicous"?
Strong words! Surely you don't mean that securely wiping data in
itself implies a criminal offence? Whoa! Think about it!

It's not that he wants to erase data.  It's that he wants to hide when
the data was erased.  That's what's suspicious.

>>It's not that he wants to erase data.  It's that he wants to hide when
>>the data was erased.  That's what's suspicious

Yes, this is exactly the point. Theer are no doubt many reasons to
want to delete data.  But why would you want to hide the fact that
there was data at all?  The only people I can think of caring about
this is the police/courts.