Does the recycling thing on your computer COMPLETELY delete the contents of files etc?

Question

I have these files [not bad ones] that I really want to delete from my computer. I was wondering if the recycling thing for your computer COMPLETELY deletes the contents of my files? I heard somewhere before that it isn't true, and it is still stored in the harddrive or something. If it is not fully gone, can you tell me how to COMPLETELY delete it?

Thanks in advance =]

P.S. - Don't answer till you are absolutely sure.

Answer 1

When you delete something, it simply marks the area where it was stored as "being available again"  Until/unless something writes over that spot again, you can still recover it with recovery software.

If you want to SECURELY erase a file, you will need another 3rd part app.  You can get Spybot Search and destroy which has a "Secure shredder" application that you can drag a file to and it will over-write the area(s) where the file is stored several times with random data so that the file can not be "recovered".

http://www.safer-networking.org

There are other "shredder" apps out there, but I know the one with Spybot works and even better, it's free... :)

Answer 2

Assuming you're using a PC, you're right: even if you empty your recycle bin the files are still there. When a file is "deleted" it is not erased, but the space it takes up is designated as free so that new data will eventually overwrite it.

I'm not sure about ways to permanently delete files. If you've got the rest of your system backed up, you could reformat your hard drive and reinstall everything. Apart from that, all I can suggest is to google "permanently delete" or some variation of that and check out some of the available programs.