Ask Juan - Question and Answer
Deleted Items? Not So.
Deleted Items? Not So.
Recycling an item from your computer does not "remove" it from your computer. Contrary to popular belief, deleting data from your hard drive is not what you would expect. 99.99% of your data remains intact when you hit the delete button.
The question remains, "What happens when you do hit the delete button?" Simply put, your computer is not an etch-a-sketch. When you draw something on an etch-a-sketch, and you want to erase it, you shake it until all the Ones and Zeros (aluminum powder) gets replaced by only zeros. Not so with a computer.
Your computer is designed with efficiency in mind - not security. Instead of replacing all the ones and zeros (the binary code that make up your document) with all zeros, your file simply gets marked as replaceable space by changing the first character of the document to a common flag. This lets the system know it's ok to "put" new data on top of the old data.
The solution to this security concern is to replace your document with another. Efficiency is replaced by security when you take the effort to replace this "marked-for-replacement" data with other stuff.
One way of doing this is to do a defrag each time you delete something you don't want to accidentally reveal after it's been deleted. But it is still not enough. Your document could have been placed at the end of the data stream in your hard drive making a defrag a useless tool to "wipe" your deleted item clean.
What to do then? There are third party tools available that actually take the time to replace all the data with new data - say turn all the ones and zeros to only zeros (a digital etch-n-sketch for your computer).
Remember! Formatting your hard drive is not enough. Replacing the operating system is not enough. Installing the original software that came with your computer is not enough. You get the picture. All these methods may help a little, but the surest way of getting rid of your data is to smash your hard drive with a sledge hammer.
-Juan