How do I permanently delete files?

Yes, I know about clearing out the recycle bin, but I am under the belief
that the "erased file" still exists on the hard drive so that someone else
can access that file later on.

I used to have a Norton utility that had a defragger on it where it would
manually rewrite all the free space on a drive to a null string. That way,
the erased file would be written over and, thus, unrecoverable. I don't
believe that XP's defragger offers this option.

Can anyone offer some trick that would do this?

Thanks

They will have problems accessing the files unless they put in quite a lot
of effort, time and money.. for now, recycle bin and beyond is fine..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Funky One" <Funky One@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3DBE01A5-77A4-4374-A359-45267A2DBCDD@microsoft.com...
> How do I permanently delete files?
>
> Yes, I know about clearing out the recycle bin, but I am under the belief
> that the "erased file" still exists on the hard drive so that someone else
> can access that file later on.
>
> I used to have a Norton utility that had a defragger on it where it would
> manually rewrite all the free space on a drive to a null string. That
> way,
> the erased file would be written over and, thus, unrecoverable. I don't
> believe that XP's defragger offers this option.
>
> Can anyone offer some trick that would do this?
>
> Thanks
>
>

Helps not ever sending to the recycle bin to begin with. Windows does track
file access with a recent list.
There's 3rd party file shredding programs out there, some are dangerous in
the wrong hands, some are free.
--
Jonny
"Funky One" <Funky One@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3DBE01A5-77A4-4374-A359-45267A2DBCDD@microsoft.com...
> How do I permanently delete files?
>
> Yes, I know about clearing out the recycle bin, but I am under the belief
> that the "erased file" still exists on the hard drive so that someone else
> can access that file later on.
>
> I used to have a Norton utility that had a defragger on it where it would
> manually rewrite all the free space on a drive to a null string. That
way,
> the erased file would be written over and, thus, unrecoverable. I don't
> believe that XP's defragger offers this option.
>
> Can anyone offer some trick that would do this?
>
> Thanks
>
>

Funky One wrote:

> How do I permanently delete files?
>
> Yes, I know about clearing out the recycle bin, but I am under the
> belief that the "erased file" still exists on the hard drive so that
> someone else can access that file later on.


"Deleting" a file (whether from the recycle bin or directly if you bypass
the recycle bin) doesn't actually delete it; it just marks the space as
available to be used. There are third-party programs that can sometimes
recover deleted files. However the space used by the file is likely to
become overwritten very quickly, and this makes the file unrecoverable (or
at least very difficult to recover).

Professional file recovery services can sometimes recover even overwritten
files, but their services are expensive. Most people don't need to wory
about this. Worst case, even if your computer gets stolen, it's highly
unlikely that the thief would pay their kind of prices on the off chance
there might be something of value there. Even if the file had *not* been
overwritten, it's unlikely that a thief would go to the trouble of trying to
undelete files (or even know how). Although there are third-party programs
you can use to overwrite deleted files, even they are't perfect; for that
reason the US government physically destroys drives containing really
sensitive data, rather than relying on such overwriting programs. So my
advice is not to worry about this.

On the other hand, if you're an international spy... ;-)

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
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