I am running a Gutmann clean (35 passes), but for experimental purposes, I downloaded Recuva to see whether I could find the files again, and althought they are renamed in a new format, the content is still in tact.
Are my settings incorrect or am I supposed to never be able to permenantly delete the contents of my files, regardless of the number of passes?
One overwrite pass (let alone 35) will overwrite data so that it can not be recovered. If you are retrieving valid data from overwritten files then:
1) The files have not been overwritten. CC secure overwrite will rename the files to a variation of ZZZZ.ZZ. Are your files renamed this way, or do they have some other filename?
2) The space the overwritten files occupied has been allocated to a new file, and this is what you are seeing. In the Recuva Info panel, does it say that the files have been overwritten? If you have securely deleted the files with CC and then immediately looked at them with Recuva then this is going to be unlikely. If the files were overwritten with CC some time ago there is more chance that they now have a new occupant.
Is this one file, some or all securely deleted files? Are you using normal scan to find the files or deep scan?
These are files that delted from the PC, then emptied the recycle bin and then I used CC to overwrite (35 passes) and then searched for using Recuva. The strange thing was, they were listed as in excellent condition and then when I recovered them, their contents was in perfect order, although the overall file was renamed in the format ZZZZ.ZZ
In the recovery details, it says there is no overwritten clusters detected...
First I used Normal scan and found all 350 of the files that I deleted using CC, I then used Deep scan and found nearly 300,000 files of which about 40% were recoverable but dated back to January when I used CC to remove them...
I don't use the recycler, not with CC anyway, so I'm not familiar with what's happening there. I think we'll have to wait for another opinion, many do use this method.
It is possible to find a lot of files using deep scan that you thought were deleted, and indeed I have found files which I know I have never deleted or ever even looked at (Windows' boring wallpaper, for instance). These could be the residue of defrags, edits, reallocated bad clusters, etc. Or even rewrites due to superparamagnetic decay.