MASTERS ~ COMPUTER TIPS
Deleted Files Are Not Deleted
Submitted by Jamie
from information received at CLOUDEIGHT
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tips/deleted-files.htm
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When you "delete" files
they're not really deleted and they're not taking
up space either. Think of your hard drive as a
chalk board. When you erase a chalk board, you
can't see what you erased (very well) but
somewhere in the slate of the chalk board is
everything you've ever written on it. But still
you can write something new on it. So it is with
your hard drive.
When you "delete" a file, you're
telling Windows that you don't want that file
anymore and telling Windows to use the space that
file once occupied for something else. So Windows
shows the space once occupied by that file as
"available" so you can install a new
program or use the space that whatever you
deleted was occupying for something new. But, way
down deep on the magnetic surface of your hard
drive the file that you deleted is still there.
That's how the FBI and other authorities gather
evidence against criminals who think by deleting
or formatting their hard drives they can erase
all the incriminating evidence it might have once
contained. But there is software available that
can capture the faintest particles of deleted
files and restore them. There is hardware
available that can even extract more data from
"formatted" hard drives. In fact most
"formatted" hard drives can be
completely restored. The software and hardware
that can do this is very expensive for the most
part. But you can find programs to download (some
free) that can easily "undelete" a
freshly deleted file.
The only way to completely remove data from your
hard drive is by "erasing". Erasing is
a very misleading term. If you want to be sure
that deleted data can never be recovered from you
hard drive you need to use a program that
replaces the deleted data with gibberish. An
"eraser" program like "Eraser"
replaces "free space" created when you
delete files by overwriting it many, many, times
with unintelligible data (usually random
sequences of numbers, letters, and symbols). Some
good eraser programs may overwrite it hundreds of
times to make recovery impossible or nearly
impossible.
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