Quote:
| Really good info this, Suprising how many people think that when they hit delete the files are gone.... Big Brother is watching!! |
Hint: if you want to delete a file in Windows Explorer use SHIFT-Delete, the file will be deleted and not go in the Recycle Bin.
If you use the Delete key, the file is copied to the Recycle Bin (a folder called RECYCLER or $Recycle.bin). But all you need to do is empty the Recycle Bin on your desktop to completely delete the file.
There are a couple of things to be aware
1) "Delete" in this case just means mark the hard disk as available to be reused. There are some utilities that can be used to undelete if you have not used the hard disk since the file was deleted.
2) NTFS stores small files in the MFT (Master File Table - the index of files on your hard disk). Deleting these small files and defragging will usually get rid of those files completely because the space they used will be overwritten.
3) For NTFS bigger files are stored elsewhere on the hard disk and the MTF just points to where. Defragging helps a bit, but only if the defragger overwrites the disk used by the file. So don't trust this.
4) There are "file scrubber" utilities that will overwrite the space used by deleted files. The better ones overwrite the hard disk many times.
The last point is important. When the hard disk over writes a section of disk, the hard disk head will not be in the exact same position as it was when it wrote the file, so there may be a thin magnetic track still containing the file. Hard disk forensics companies have tools to read these tracks (it is an expensive process). If you write over the hard disk many times you are likely to write over it completely.
Richard
Competitions 
How To Delete Microsofts Hidden Files On You 
Linear Mode
