In places where sensitive and highly critical data is involved, there is always a need for a software, that is capable of permanently deleting data.
For example, consider a secret agency like the intelligence wing of a state or the nuclear agency of a country that maintains confidential data about the location of nuclear reactors in the country.
Transactional data handled in these organizations are highly important, and the organizations need to keep the data safe and prevent it from being leaked or misused.
The importance of a file erasure tool is therefore highly important in these places to keep the data confidential.
Though initially the need for such a file eraser software was felt only in such organizations, slowly the need for making these tools available for the common man increased, due to the increase in the rate of cyber crimes.
This led to development of various file deletion and disk wipe tools that were made available on the internet.
There were two basic types of data deletion tools that were developed, namely data erasure tools that helped the user erase data by deleting files on selection basis, and other disk wipe software that let the user permanently remove all the data from the hard drive.
The same technique of overwriting data was made use of in both the types of software, and it was made sure that data was overwritten for a minimum of three to four times to ensure complete erasure of information.
Most of the data erasure tools let the user choose between different types of overwriting methods, some of which were recommended by top secret agencies.