Marcus ejected the drive, pocketed it, and walked out into the dawn. Behind him, the server hummed its peaceful lullaby once more. The data had not been destroyed. It had simply been moved—perfectly, invisibly, and with absolute precision.

He looked at the Paragon USB stick. It had just saved his job, possibly the company's quarterly earnings, and certainly his sanity. "I used a scalpel," he said. "Not a hammer."

Step one: Shrink C:. He right-clicked. "Resize/Move." A slider appeared. He dragged the right edge of the blue C: block leftward, carving 1.2TB of "Unallocated Space" from the end of the drive. Paragon calculated. "Estimated time: 4 minutes. Data integrity: Verified."