Malice
BMFH
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Over the years, I get asked questions of many types.
I am going to try to start documenting common questions.
1) When I "empty my trash can" are the files that were deleted from the trash can gone completely?
To answer this question, we have to give a little explanation on how data is stored on a hard drive. Lets say, you copy a huge 10GB movie to your harddrive. The Operating System literally starts at the beginning of your hard drive (what is called, sector 0) and starts copying the movie to the hard drive, in any "empty" sector. So in other words.....Sector 27, then 99, then 29902...
In other words, it copies to the hard drive, starting at the beginning working its way sector by sector towards the outside of the hard drive. (This is also how you get massive defragmentation of a hard drive).
On the hard drive is something called the FAT (File Allocation Table). This is the, "table of contents" of the data on the hard drive. So to explain, in the FAT, it lists all the sectors, where the movie in the above example is located.
When you "delete" a file, you are actually, just deleting the reference to it in the FAT. Not actually deleting the data. So programs have been written to pull data from the drive itself, sector by sector, ignoring the FAT.
So if you want something TRULLY gone, use a program like Eraser to actually overwrite data, not just delete the FAT references.
I am going to try to start documenting common questions.
1) When I "empty my trash can" are the files that were deleted from the trash can gone completely?
To answer this question, we have to give a little explanation on how data is stored on a hard drive. Lets say, you copy a huge 10GB movie to your harddrive. The Operating System literally starts at the beginning of your hard drive (what is called, sector 0) and starts copying the movie to the hard drive, in any "empty" sector. So in other words.....Sector 27, then 99, then 29902...
In other words, it copies to the hard drive, starting at the beginning working its way sector by sector towards the outside of the hard drive. (This is also how you get massive defragmentation of a hard drive).
On the hard drive is something called the FAT (File Allocation Table). This is the, "table of contents" of the data on the hard drive. So to explain, in the FAT, it lists all the sectors, where the movie in the above example is located.
When you "delete" a file, you are actually, just deleting the reference to it in the FAT. Not actually deleting the data. So programs have been written to pull data from the drive itself, sector by sector, ignoring the FAT.
So if you want something TRULLY gone, use a program like Eraser to actually overwrite data, not just delete the FAT references.
