Problem deleating things on hard drive

Another very good one is Heidi Eraser:

Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS.
Eraser is FREE software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

 

Yeah bigbuck, as others have said... those files remain in exactly the same way... moved actually means stay put but with over-write available.

This is what confused me in my early computer days.

It's all about the words used to say what we think the drive is able to do. But the fact is hard drives are not written in the way our minds think when using these words. They are magnetically imprinted. The magnetic clusters are changed in shape to line up with the magnetic impression that the electrical signal... the data... impresses on them.

They then are hard repositioned... will stay for all time... in a hard way... hence the name hard drive... they have to be hard written to change shape to become new data again.

This is why lots of over-writes are needed to erase them completely. There is always a ghost of the previous written data embedded in the clusters that go deep below the ones on top... they are physical entities and have lives of their own, minds of their own if you wanna go really deep into this stuff. All mind or universal energy (life) is made from electronic/magnetic energy.

What I would now like to see here... is a technician from PC World... seeing this thread in the UK... come on here and tell us all... is this company policy to use recover software on computers they service, or did they just get lucky in this case and maybe saw stuff in the temp. int. files etc.

I feel we will never know unless we get inside information on this one.

 

Thanks Zarzenz, That was an excellent explanation! I'd figured there had to be recoverable files still on the HD. But I had wondered because of the way in which files were removed from USB sticks and Dig Cameras when moved.
Anyway....I think these techs from PC World probably just found history or temps etc. in this case. Surely they wouldn't be running recovery apps in this case?
Anyway, thanks again,
Buck.

 

Ok bigbuck... cheers.

The interesting thing is that the same applies to USB sticks and the media cards in digital cameras. They all are recoverable after files are deleted or moved. I'm not sure how many over-writes are needed in the case of these media devices before any trace of the original data could be recovered.

Media cards in digital cameras are probably not that much of a problem as they could easily be destroyed to prevent recovery. USB sticks being more expensive would be more of an issue like hard drives I guess.

Anyway... any PC World technicians out there... please let us know what you guys actually do with the PCs you have to service... we would like to know the company policy in this sensitive privacy area.

 

thanx guys for this interesting thread!!

 

Just noticed that the current version of SDelete is now 1.4 (not 1.2 as the page shows), with a file modified date of 22-Jan-05.

Nick