Proper Deletion

[BCWWF]

I have a few big files on my computer, well basically just a few full length movies, that I want to get rid of. I've heard rumors that like if you delete stuff its still technically on your computer or something? To get rid of these movies forever is it more complicated than just putting them in the trash and deleting them again?

BTW, Mac

[Y2Ant]

I just delete them normally, works for me.

However your hard drive does get cluttered after a long time, so you need to format it like every 6 months or whatever, I do it every year. I heard you were supposed to do it every 3 months, but that is just too much messing around IMO

[Funky Fly]

Iolo System Mechanic comes with an incinerator program that takes care of that kind of stuff.

[CREDO]

even after you run a specialised program to whipe the info off a drive it can still be recovered to a point, depending on what you used to erase it. even after a full format.
it gets very expensive to recover it though.
I have read of so called "military grade" prgrams that will erase things so well that its near impossible to recover. never bothered looking into it though.

I have no idea for a MAC. never even used one, hell I dont think I have even seen one other than every movie where a computer is involved, what is it with that? any time someone is on the net in TV or movies its always a f'n mac. Why? legal reasons? i dunno.

[Bad Company]

I've got some software that will delete an entire hard drive, changes the code to all 1's, then all 0's, then randomly writes 0's and 1's.
Does it 8 Times over, it's serious Govt Spec stuff. Won't do individual files though.

[CREDO]

whats it called? I wouldnt mind that in my software tools folder.

[BCWWF]

Lol, I'm not trying to hide my stash of illegal child porn or something, I just want to delete it so that its taking up as little of my hard drive as possible. Does trashing it do the job?

[Bad Company]

yes it will do the job.

CREDO, I cant remember the name, I'll send it to you if you like when I find it.

[Y2Ant]

So with me formatting my old HD and putting it in a computer for someone else, they could recover all my shit I wiped off it :mad:?

[Bad Company]

Yeah, if they knew enough about data recovery.

[Y2Ant]

brb gonna get my sledgehammer :shifty:

[CREDO]

Well I just had a bit of a look around and it seems that a program called

Dban
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
found on the ultimate boot cd
http://public.ubcd.planetmirror.com/news.html

does a fine job of cleaning out drives. multipule passes of random 0's and 1's. Dod government methods. rather cool.
with a shitload of money and about 6 months to spare You could still recover maybe a few words from the drive.

unless the FBI takes your drive and think your worth the time money and effort to recover your data, i think your pretty safe.

Handy little tool that boot cd.

[The Snake]

I've got some software that will delete an entire hard drive, changes the code to all 1's, then all 0's, then randomly writes 0's and 1's.
Does it 8 Times over, it's serious Govt Spec stuff. Won't do individual files though.

Yeah, before they removed the REAL dos from Windows installations this could be done by rebooting into DOS mode and deleting through DOS. One of the reasons deleting would take 10 minutes in DOS and 2 seconds in Windows.

Most "deleting" nowdays if i'm not mistaken is just removing the index and marking the diskspace as writable without removing the info. Hence the ability to recover deleted files durring criminal investigations.

[Kapoutman]

I just delete them normally, works for me.

However your hard drive does get cluttered after a long time, so you need to format it like every 6 months or whatever, I do it every year. I heard you were supposed to do it every 3 months, but that is just too much messing around IMO
What the hell are you talking about? Don't reformat. Defrag. It does the same thing. Put the indexes in order with the following clusters and everything.