Shaft

Shaft is a small-sized and portable application you can use to remove unnecessary files securely from the computer to free up space and protect your privacy when sharing the workstation with other people.

This is done by overwriting the files several times to prevent data recovery programs from getting hold of the original file names and contents. It features intuitive options that can be tackled with ease, even by those less experienced with such tools.

The utility is packed into a clear-cut interface made from one window that encompasses all settings put at your disposal. Several preset folders are listed by default, whose total containing files are taken into account for the shredding operation, such as cookies, recently accessed documents, and temporary Internet files.

You can view all files from a selected directory and check out their extensions and full paths, add separate files and directories to the cleaning operation, refresh the list if any modifications were performed in the meantime, as well as set the number of passes used for overwriting files (from 0 to 64). The duration of the task depends on the amount and overall size of files as well as passes. Keyboard shortcuts are supported.

Shaft is wrapped in a portable pack, so there's no need for setup. You can just drop the downloaded .exe in any part of the hard disk or copy it to a removable storage device to seamlessly launch the utility on any machine. No new records are added to the Windows registry, and no extra files are created on the hard drive without asking for permission.

Taking into account the straightforward interface and options, Shaft can be easily tackled by those interested in securely erasing sensitive photos, documents, accessed websites, and other types of data. However, it doesn't bring any exciting features to the table.