www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Deleted or not as the case may be.

Installed a free program the other day Advanced system care, good program.

Anyway found a thing in my recycle bin un-delete, and file shredder, so me being me thought I would see what it does.

Only starts un-deleting virtually every file etc I every deleted, going back to 2002 when I got the computer, I stopped it at 20,000, put them back in the bin and shredded them.

Frightening

hehe cool this is why we use trucrypt at work (for if a laptop is lost or stolen). and if we dump a pc we remove the hard drives and use an electromagnetic degaussing machine (which is noisy!)

When you delete a file, the file isn't actually removed from disk. The area on disk is marked as free in the File Allocation Table (FAT) so it can be re-used. This is how you can undelete a file if the area on disk hasn't been overwritten.

Tjank you Rich.

Would it over write it if there was free Virgin space, or is it just pot luck

A couple I un-deleted contained a Virus, and I only did a few.

Large areas of contiguous free space will be used first, then smaller "free" areas from deleted files etc. will be used next. If the free areas aren't large enough to hold the complete file it will be spread over a number of free areas. This how the file system becomes fragemented.

So the bigger the hard drive the less likely they are to be over written.

Yes, I believe so. As with most things in IT it's not quite that straight forward though, as running a defrag can cause overwrites as the OS re-arranges all the file fragments.

I defrag quite often but get the impression the may be a 100s of thousands recoverable, I may have a go later. done about 40,000 so far.

Bit worrying unearthing a couple of viruses, and I only tried to open half a dozen or so.

I find all of these scans, utilities and things a total waste of time.

If your system is that bad all the time, I think the question needs to be asked: What are you doing with it!!

Now, I've not got a "normal" setup here by any means, so if I have issues with a computer I can "deploy" Windows+apps+drivers in little over 15 minutes back to how it was when I set it up.

All the time you spend scanning, deleting, defragging seems a total waste of time - forgive me, but I sit on the other side of the fence here. I do NOT see the point in any of it.

You already have your data on an external drive, so you just need to sort your OS out, update, stick your applications on and back up the WHOLE system (Ghost, Acronis, etc) to that HDD. If there is a problem/virus/running slow - just restore the image, 15 mins and you're back to a FULLY working and most importantly: TRUSTED system.

If you have to run 4 virus scanners, trojon hunters, defrag, system analysers.....how much time does that waste? If you WANT to do it or it's purely learning, sure - knock yourself out. I think if a machine has been compromised by trojans or viri these days, you are better to play it safe and restore.

I think the other way of looking at this, is what spec is your system? If it's slowed down by a few apps being on startup to the point where it's noticable - perhaps a few upgrades are in order (memory, CPU, faster HDD, etc). My work laptop get daily abuse, has almost 460GB of used data on the the 500GB HDD, gets taken all over the world, mountains of test software, forced updates from work and domain based crap I'm forced to have and it's fine!! Hell, it even runs a virtualised server 2008 setup as a domain controller that is used on-site to train and troubleshoot!!!

Go for the easy life scruff....backup, wipe, update, install - IMAGE!!! It's the future.

BG

I've always used a file shredder.

I use it set to 'secure deletion in accordance with DOD 5220.2' and have it set for 3 repetitions.

Does this mean that all deleted files on my PC are safely gone for good?

It also offers deletion by the Gutmann method. Would this be more secure, less, or no different?

I also have it set to delete 'free allocated space'

BG I bet you use hyper v

One of the joys of being retired Billy

However saying that I had it in mine to do as you suggest eventually.

Will probably buy a new computer first, this one is nearly 10 now

a 3 pass should be MORE than fine to delete files on a PC.

As it was said earlier, if you have REALLLLLY sensitive data or are at risk of loosing your computer, then look at drive encryption. FFS, back up the key somewhere if you do.

If you have Win7 ultimate, then it comes with bitlocker that can do this for you. It also supports external drives too, which are easliy lost.

BG

root wrote:

BG I bet you use hyper v

Who, me or Scruff?

root wrote:

BG I bet you use hyper v

And what's wrong with Hyper-V?