Duration of Deleted Files

[Aeneas]

I recently installed Recuva in order partly to recover some files and partly to check on the operation of CCleaner. I have two Questions.

1.When I scan my hard disc I find that apart from two files from earlier years all files listed are given a 2007 date. Does this mean that files from previous years are completely deleted and unavailable for recovery?

2. For already deleted files with an "excellent" or "poor" designation that I want to get rid of is there an easy way to eliminate/overwrite them using Recuva or CCleaner

[Augeas]

1) No. It means that the space occupied by all older files have been overwritten by later (2007) files. It's just chance, or should I say the way the file mgmt software works. I also have two files from the original install showing, they must be somewhere way off the beaten track. If you use CCleaner regularly then files will go through the process of being overwritten frequently.

 

2) No. If there is a particular deleted file I want scrubbing I don't use CC for a while, and eventually it gets overwritten, then I run CC. Apparently the facility to delete 'deleted' files is being developed.

 

Rgds.

[Aeneas]

1) No. It means that the space occupied by all older files have been overwritten by later (2007) files. It's just chance, or should I say the way the file mgmt software works. I also have two files from the original install showing, they must be somewhere way off the beaten track. If you use CCleaner regularly then files will go through the process of being overwritten frequently.

 

2) No. If there is a particular deleted file I want scrubbing I don't use CC for a while, and eventually it gets overwritten, then I run CC. Apparently the facility to delete 'deleted' files is being developed.

 

Rgds.

 

I don't quite understand your answer to 2 above when you say that you "don't use CC for a while and eventually it (the file) gets overwritten". Is there a link between use or non use of CC and overwriting on the hard disc?

[Augeas]

Well yes, in a way. As far as I can tell files will be written in the first available free area of the disk. So if you wrote 100 files and then used CC the space that these 100 files occupied becomes free space and will be overwritten with the next 100 files you write. However if you previously wrote 1000 files and then went into the pattern of using CC, writing 100 files, using CC etc. then 900 deleted files will not be overwritten and will be accessible.

 

To get rid of these notional 900 files just stop using CC for a while and as you write more files, using up more free space, they will be overwritten. This theory of course depends on the files you are writing not being sensitive. Just do a lot of browsing on some harmless websites.

 

I think that this is a crude representation of how disk cleaners work, by completely filling the disk with large files, overwriting them multiple times, and then deleting them and their entries in the file allocation tables.

 

Rgds.