The Recycle Bin

Good morning Geeks, running SP Home SP3
I've been doing some recent housework and slimming down as much as possible and making things more secure, and started wondering about the recycle bin, so I have some questions:
1. Given that emptying the recycle bin does not actually erase permanently the file, the file is essentially recoverable. I know that there are shredders that work when deleting a file, but can I shred something after a normal delete?
2. Does a file that has been deleted actually take up space?
3. What does it mean to wipe free space, is that where not permanently or overwritten files reside and how is that done? I certainly do not wnat to damage any existing files in the process.
4. I've read that it is entirely possible to "read and recover" an overwritten file and that there are some apps that advertise that they can clean "under" existing files? Seems like this is something the bad guys could exploit?
5. I use CCleaner and per another thread can use those setting going forward, but what about backward, the stuff that is there by virtue of a "normal" empty of the bin?
6. I am looking for software that can scan the recycle bin and identify what is there that could still be recovered and I've Googled it and come up with Drive Discovery and Secure Clean (and while both are not free, the trial is fully functional, so I could use the trial for a major clean then stick with CCleaner). Any experience with these two apps?

How big a risk is the recycle bin from a privacy standpoint?

 

I just ran CCleaner after checking the advanced box for wipe free space and settings to 3 pass DOD.

CCleaner says that it is cleaning the free space of 75,023.5MB. Does this mean that I have 75 GB of free space or that there is 75GB of STUFF on the free space, such as previously deleted but not permantly deleted files?

 

I dont think it would be worth the effort to delete something out the recycle bin, only to hunt it down to overwrite the space, just shred it in the first place if you want it to be gone for good.

When you click "delete" it is still taking up space, incase you want to reinstall the file, BUT once you empty the recycle bin, it no longer takes up space.

Wiping free space, is safe, it is just all the areas of the HDD that windows views as available to use (ie, empty)

Never heard of cleaning "under existing files", not only does it sound pointless it sounds risky.

Also Dont believe what you see on NCIS or CSI...

Once a file has been overwritten a few times by virtually any disk wiping program, IT IS GONE! never to be recovered.

Windows "delete" function is completely different and anything deleted by that is easily recovered unless by chance it has ALL been overwritten a few times.

If you want your data to be properly erased dont use the recycle bin at all. A file shredder is much more secure.

Although, bear in mind everything you do is most likely logged by your ISP, and ther is many methods of telling what a computer has been used for with knowing the exact content, so really if anybody has something to hide, they had better be doing a lot more than shredding and wiping free space




Hope that helps


Q

 

You can bypass the recycle bin, and deleted files are just, well - deleted...to do so, right-click the recycle bin, click Properties, and select "Do not move files to the Recycle Bin, etc..."...

From what I understand, deleted files actually do take up space - that space is just put off-limits until overwritten by a defragmentation process, or until the space is needed for other data...

 

As i said above it takes up space until you "empty" the recycle bin.

If you go to my computer and look at the space available on your drive, you will see it doesnt change just by puuting something in the recycle bin (as the space is reserved)

But as soon as you empty the recycle bin you will see the space available increase (you may have to "refresh" to see it change)



Turning the recycle bin off, just bypasses having to empty it, but any data deleted that way is easily recoverable by many free app's.


Q

 

OK, I've been doing some research and here are a couple of interesting things I found.
First, I set the CCleaner to secure deletion 3 pass going forward.
Second, I found a shareware app called Drive Recovery. It has a number of components that did what I wanted. The biggest surprise is that running the Recycle Bin Recovery tool it found over 48,000 files at various level of recoverability! Apparantly, and essentially confirmed by discussions on other forums, even reinstalling the OS, which I have done twice in 5 years, does NOT wipe the disc free of data; so I apparantly had files as old as 5 years still recoverable to some extent. This app took a while but completely wiped the free space.
The other components worked also.
This app is fully functional for the 30 day trial. I've had no issues with operation since running the components (seperately) so it appears to do what it says it will do.

 

Cool, thanks. I have an old Win98 PC that I want to donate but have been waiting until I could find a way to wipe the HD.