Asked By Ken Blake, MVP
31-May-08 01:16 PM

On Sat, 31 May 2008 07:30:00 -0700, technofobe
as available to be used. There are third-party programs that can
sometimes recover deleted files. The problem is that the space used by
the file is likely to become overwritten very quickly, and this makes
the file unrecoverable.
So your chances of successfully recovering this file are decent if you
try recovering it immediately after deleting it, and rapidly go
downhill from there.
Some people worry about this when disposing of old computers; others
don't. Those who worry about it will often run special software to
overwrite everything on the drive with zeros before disposing of it;
sometimes they even do the rewrites multiple times.
My view is that any such risk is extremely small, and is way
overstated. First, the only deleted files that could readily be
retrieved are those which had been deleted recently. Second, very few
people would have the inclination to, or take the time to, undelete
every deleted file that could be found, then search through them
looking for some confidential data of value. Considering how many
hours of effort it would take to do this, and how seldom it would
yield any result, the return on investment would be tiny.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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