is there anyway to keep someone from seeing things that have been deleted off of your harddrive?

Question

I know you can still pull up things even if they have been deleted. Is there anyway to keep someone from being able to do that?

Answer 1

if u format the hard drive in which u have deleted the files atleast for 4 -6 times then the files may actually be deleted.

Answer 2

Easy answer yes, hard answer no.

Like it or not unless you completely nuke an HDD, your information is there for the picking. However in order to do that you need access to some pretty high level stuff and unless you're dealing in highly classified information I wouldn't worry about it.

There are commercial software scrubbers out there that will do the job by writing over the areas many times with a series of 1's and 0's. The cheapest ones will use about 3 passes and the more secure ones will use up to 21 passes with varying degrees of success. I believe the DoD (Department of Defence) recommends a minimum of 7 passes before the HDDs can be considered "safe".

The only limitation to this is I believe that most only work on the entire HDD and not just on the files specified. I would suggest you check out some companies that provide these services and see what it is that they say on the matter.

Answer 3

If by 'someone' you mean a computer detective for the FBI or something, then I would suggest you format your computer (Delete EVERYTHING that is on your hard drive). Maybe even a few times to be sure, but, once will do it.

But, if you mean, from your girlfriend or something, there are programs that 'erase' files off of hard disks. Its much better than deleting it and emptying it from the recylcing bin. The only program I can think of is Zilla Data Nuker. Oh, and X-Cleaner has a 'shredder', too.

If you already deleted it then it cant be permanantly deleted unless you format.
Hopefully your not needing to delete some inappropriate porn and I just enabled you to hide it :P

Answer 4

Here's the deal: deleted material is not actually erased from the drive. Only the reference to it is deleted. This is sort of like erasing the table of contents, but leaving the rest of the book in tact. Thus, the space occupied by old material is available to be overwritten by new material. Problem is, you have no way of knowing whether any particular items actually ARE overwritten with new stuff. For that, you need a program that goes out and finds all that stuff and overwrites it with nonsense; there should be something for free or low cost as a download. Oh ...and don't forget to empty the recycle bin!

Answer 5

Yes there is. Its not a fun way of doing it, but you actually have to destroy it =/. As in take a sledgehammer to it on the pavement. If you're throwing out your Hard Drive, be sure to this. Im being honest no matter how cooky it sounds. This is what Ive been told by a computer specialist.

Answer 6

Even the US government recommends destroying the harddrive when you are done with the computer.

Answer 7

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Security/SDelete.mspx