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Topic: Once you delete a file and clear it from your recycle bin, what happens to it?

Anonymous 109cf12a82c8954fe2494880ecc68a0f started this discussion 3 months (2008-08-27 22:42:39 UTC) ago:

Is it still on your computer somewhere? How can you be sure it's gone? And is it possible to retrieve deleted files?

Anonymous 21d6566b00397286c288c61bd6de4724 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-27 22:48:54 UTC) ago, 6 minutes later (#55,041):

As far as I understand it, the "recycle bin" in Windows is just a special directory. You actually just "move" the file there when you "delete" it. When you delete it from the recycle bin, the reference to this bit of data is removed from Windows/the file system. However, the actual data is not erased but laying around until it is written over (which could happen the next second or minutes, hours, days, weeks or months later).

Due to the way that hard disk drives are designed, which I don't at all understand, it is actually somehow possible to recover files even when the data has been overwritten not only once, but several times. With enough time and money, one can recover data from almost any HDD, no matter what you did to it.

It's scary.

Anonymous ed395d5eea62c0f2b8f88e440c1fad81 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-28 04:09:58 UTC) ago, 5 hours later (#55,085):

@55,041

> Due to the way that hard disk drives are designed, which I don't at all understand, it is actually somehow possible to recover files even >when the data has been overwritten not only once, but several times. With enough time and money, one can recover data from almost any HDD, >no matter what you did to it.

That's bullshit. Once you overwrite a file with zeroes, it's gone forever. You can't recover data that doesn't exist anymore.

Anonymous 349f321ac453536194aeffa3310ed586 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-28 05:14:11 UTC) ago, 1 hour later (#55,092):

@55,085

This man has an understanding. The DoD recommends 5 passes minimum, 30 for the paranoid, for overwriting data on HDs to remove old content. Google Eraser, it has multible settings, some of which are DoD compliant.

Anonymous 02f84d86f7de305513cf54db9d000842 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-28 16:27:15 UTC) ago, 11 hours later (#55,195):

@55,092

But what's a DoD?

Anonymous 21d6566b00397286c288c61bd6de4724 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-28 16:39:32 UTC) ago, 12 minutes later (#55,199):

@55,085

Sounds like you are being ignorant. Well… I know what I know, and you can continue to believe whatever you want to believe…

Anonymous 735ecb097a34daa6d9b527677e9adc37 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-28 17:53:47 UTC) ago, 1 hour later (#55,212):

@55,195

The DoD is the Department of Defense.

Anonymous e415a459b2adc47c8bea7018b17a6da9 replied with this 3 months (2008-08-29 02:09:24 UTC) ago, 8 hours later (#55,386):

@55,199

http://16systems.com/zero/index.html

All the magical super data recovery stuff was just made up so people would buy special software to erase their hard drives. Once something gets overwritten it's gone

Anonymous 8642237e699cae2bfb4b1b4173d54ebc replied with this 3 months (2008-08-29 21:54:49 UTC) ago, 20 hours later (#55,579):

@55,386

Feel free to believe whatever you want.. But proper, strong recovery software can recover the previous written data behind 0's even up to 4-20 formattings. Not very common, but police, military etc. have these tools

Heck, there's free software on torrent sites that can recover up to 2 formattings. A file isn't "gone" after you delete it & empty your windows trash bin.

Anonymous 316895a9ef437753e4466244f2c22fef replied with this 3 months (2008-08-30 01:14:22 UTC) ago, 3 hours later (#55,623):

@55,085

Uh, ask anybody who does computer forensics. There are patterns left behind in the magnetic field that can be detected even after it's been overwritten.

Anonymous 8e669c72a3d0ac0147ac69751fd2860b replied with this 3 months (2008-08-30 18:07:08 UTC) ago, 17 hours later (#55,756):

you delete it it gose to bin you empty bin, it becomes 1's amd 0's on your harddrive. it dosent go away untill you have the comeputer reset, such as something like a factory reset. acer comps are the best fro that. used mine and factory reset every night, granted i stoped installing things on it cuz it was a waste of time to install them every night.

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