C# - Deleting a file permanently

Question

I\'ve been out of the C# game for a while since I started iPhone stuff, but how can you delete a file completely (so its not stored in memory) and isn\'t recoverable. If you

Answer 1

It's certainly possible to overwrite a file so that the previous content cannot be recovered. But this has to be done by the drive itself to make sure the correct block is overwritten... C# interacts with the filesystem, not physical blocks, so won't provide any security.

The actual way to ask a drive to securely erase something varies with interface (ATAPI vs SATA, vs USB mass-storage vs SCSI vs firewire), and C# doesn't provide a simple way of commanding at this level.

Answer 2

sdelete run this command via Process in c#.

Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo( "cmd", "/c sdelete -p 1 -s -z -q -a 'path/to/director' )
    {
        RedirectStandardOutput = true,
        UseShellExecute = false,
        CreateNoWindow = true
    };
p.Start();
string output = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
p.WaitForExit();

sdelete can be downloaded here