#Double commander delete with wiping update#

Some modern operating systems do perform some type of wipe for data in RAM, but not necessarily on a hard disk. There are programs out there that will wipe partitions or portions of memory. It is suggested to overwrite the data multiple times to ensure any errors in writing are compensated for. And the left over data is not the original data that piece of memory contained. Then once the delete happens the operating system loses its reference to that data. Some might say to overwrite with another constant value, or even with random data. When you generally thinking of wiping you think of overwriting the space with zeros. But the original data is still sitting there.īefore performing the delete operation the block of memory is overwritten in some way. And the operating system removes its reference to that chunk of memory. The delete operation has just told the operating system that that space is now available again to be written over. The thing to remember is that the data is still sitting in memory. This when you perform you standard delete from a disk. If you do multiple passes with a very secure wiping algorithm though (like DoD, which overwrites the data 35(!) times), even this becomes unfeasible.Ī lot of times these terms are used interchangeably. It's like erasing a letter with a pencil and writing another letter over it sometimes you can still faintly see the original letter. However, skilled investigators may still be able to recover the data by putting your hard disk platters under an electron microscope to determine what was originally there, as overwrites are not always completely clean. If you do a single wipe (ie, you overwrite the space once with random data), you're probably not going to be able to recover anything with standard data recovery programs anymore. This is how most data recovery programs work.Ģ. Yes, it is usually quite easy to recover deleted (not wiped) data as long as it hasn't been too long since the data was deleted. CCleaner, for example, is one freeware program that has that ability.ġ. This makes it nearly impossible to recover any previously deleted files. For maximum security though, there are many programs out there that actually fill the entire hard drive with random data and then delete the random data, sometimes more than a dozen times.

To do a wipe many operating systems support the key combination Shift+Del which will immediately overwrite the space the file occupied.

#Double commander delete with wiping update#

When you do a wipe (also sometimes called a secure delete), you are telling the operating system to not only update its file records, but also immediately overwrite the disk space with either zeros or random data, making it much harder to recover anything. Before then, the data is still recoverable using data recovery programs. That could be a few minutes later, or many weeks later, depending on how the computer is used. The information is only removed when, at some point in the future, the OS decides to use the space to store another file.

Instead, the OS/file system simply updates a database keeping track of files on the disk to acknowledge that the file is no longer needed and hides the file from being visible. When you delete a file, the information is not immediately removed from the disk.