One more question before I crash!

I've just surfed the net for like 15 minutes. I'll CClean (or remove temps by any method) when I'm finished. Now in the morning, before I leave for work I'll be on for a few minutes again. Will I be re-writing over the same part of the disk?

Huh?

maybe...

I believe what he's asking is that if he used CCleaner to clean off the junk, would it then re-write to the same space with other data or would it be in other places.

Correct! Since shredders write zeros over your drive, I am presuming that after you "clean" your computer, via any method (source), that data, files, whatever just keep being re-written on the same general area that has just been cleaned. Or, is my entire internet history (no, its not what you're thinking, the worst sites I visit are a couple of sports message boards) still on my computer? Just curious, because at work I check this site three or four times a day when I should be working! lol

CCleaner doesn't have secure shred. Yes, someone with enough motivation (and a $100 piece of software) can recover most of the deleted data. When files are deleted and re-created they are usually created in a different place, although they COULD theoretically take the same spot (but that is rarely possible).

When a file is deleted windows only marks the file as deleted by changing the first character of the filename to a funny character in the directory listing. Unless the hard drive is almost full then it is unlikely that windows will overwrite those files right away. There are free programs that can recover them. It all depends on how hard they want to recover your files. You can use a free file shredder like eraser found at:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/