Deleting A File – Does Not Get Rid Of It

[Daffy D]

I imagine just about every one knows by now that deleting a file does not physically remove it and that it can be recovered with the appropriate software.

What about moving a file? Over time I get additional hard drives and often rearrange my files and folders to try keep things tidy.

Are traces of files left when they are moved?

If I have a file that has over time been moved around I then one day decide to remove and shred that file will there still be recoverable copies of this file in all the places that it ever been?

[wxpwzrd]

A "move" between different volumes is essentially a copy followed by a delete. If the move is within a single volume, only the pointers for the file are changed. So the "move" will suffer the same residue as deletes.

[sensei]

Google Eraser to get rid of every trace of evidence

[RKASA]

free program called erraser becomes part of menu select errase or just delete can overwrite file up to 35 times it'll be gone.  

google it. has an icon for the tray also.  been using it for years in windows.

edit ok sensei can type faster then me.

Edited August 22, 2008 by RKASA

[adammike]

Ok so I have a harddrive 100gb its full and 80 gb is porn that i want to remove,

{a friend wants to know]

So I delete it but its still there of course,so i then fill the drive up with music or movies

then delete it,fill it again with music delete it.

So how many times would i have to fill the drive delete fill delete till the data is unreadable?

I will need to trash a drive soon that has banking and personal details on but i might just

drive a six inch nail through it.

[RKASA]

Pretty much the same thing but a lot of frags will be left.  Use erraser to clean a whole drive and not delete what is there present.  It will overwrite empty space and then go back and collect the un used cluster tips of the files you keep and clean them also.  This gets slow on a large drive but is complete.  Nothing but what you want is left. Delete everything and it will be easy to clean the whole drive.

You need one wipe to delete

three to distory

seven to meet DoD spec

35 to meet NSA req.  erraser has all options.

Edited August 22, 2008 by RKASA

[Cuban]

Are traces of files left when they are moved?

Many years ago when computer porn was just begining to surface amoung companies that had computer systems that allowed emails to be exchanged outside of the company's networks there were a number of cases where someone sent the wrong image to the wrong person - X was ofended and Y was sacked etc etc. I was working with such a computer department that got periodic calls from various people asking via such obscure questions about 'files' and how to take them away etc it was quite funny.

One point that someone in this situation might like to consider if they wish to avoid any 'misunderstandings' in the future would be any filenames that they might like to avoid being found on their computer. You may find that during HDD maintenance or with anti-virus program logs or report files that 'ofending' filenames might be recorded. Some file names that suggest content that draws unwanted attention might be best removed.

Don't forget old backups or 'restore' files.

Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!

[RKASA]

Good point Cubin,  An external drive or flash when used with a kiosk cd will help.  You can do banking etc and when the PC is shut the whole operation is gone because it only sees the RAM.  No keylogger but one on a network maybe would get passwords or account info because its your software, but what you saved to the flash if you even needed to save will be there.  That can be cleaned before you shut down vary fast as a complete wipe of a few gig is only a few minutes.  As for the bosses PC, well don't use others PC for personnel use.  Many companies have that rule, now you know why..  

Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!, Thats a second option for sure. 

[Daffy D]

A "move" between different volumes is essentially a copy followed by a delete. If the move is within a single volume, only the pointers for the file are changed. So the "move" will suffer the same residue as deletes.

So if I move a file around on the same drive the actual file stays in the same place only the pointers for it are moved and if I shred the file all traces will be removed.

On the other hand if I move a file from one drive to another a trace of it will be left on the original drive no matter how much I shred the moved file on the new drive.

Thanks for all the other replies and suggestions. Despite what some may think this is theoretical question for future reference.

Imagine a situation where you have just one drive that gets filled up and you add another drive. What you do is tidy up and rearrange your files between the two drives, very neat and tidy.

After a while you may want to add another dive, so much stuff on the internet you keep running out of space. So again you tidy up and rearrange your files between three drives

What I’m getting at is that after time you forget all the places your files have been so if one day you delete and shred, no matter how many passes, there are likely to be recoverable leftovers on other drives of you system.

[think_too_mut]

A "move" between different volumes is essentially a copy followed by a delete. If the move is within a single volume, only the pointers for the file are changed. So the "move" will suffer the same residue as deletes.

More precisely: it's a copy with flagging the source blocks "free". If nothing comes to use them, the blocks are still there.

However, if the file was a video clip, of, say, 100 blocks, each of 32K, and 1 block became used by some other data, the whole file is unrecoverable (very skilled experts are needed to do anything with the file).

[Cuban]

....you forget all the places your files have been so if one day you delete and shred, no matter how many passes, there are likely to be recoverable leftovers on other drives of you system.

In this situation the chances that you will recover an old copy of an important lost file decrease as the importance of the file in question increases.

Storage is getting cheaper - get many.

I am happy I took many backups of import stuff I carried on my secure laptop (HDD encryption) as one day late last year the HDD suffered a incident during a defrag - I lost the lot on the laptop. USB backups and DVD copies of backups secure.