I'm the opposite. I'd trust a Windows app over something custom any day. All Cipher does is overwrite unused space on a hard drive. If you have an empty drive, it will write over the entire disk 3 times and with different characters each time. It's really that simple. lol Why would you need anything else? Many of those hard drive-manufacturer applications only write over the drive once with ones and zeros. Cipher's actual purpose is to be used as an encryption utility, so what better way than to use it to mask your unused hard drive space?

Anyway, don't knock it until you've tried it. It's free and works for all hard drives, rather than just a specific brand. I really doubt that one of those free apps will be able to retrieve anything useful from a drive that has been 'ciphered'.