Recovery & Ccleaner

[jenniferatemple]

Curious thing. I do a 35 pass wipe of my free space with Ccleaner so I was very surprised and annoyed when a ran a recovery program to get back some jpeg files I decided I should have kept. It found every picture ever in this computer and  triple duplicates in most cases. Just thumbs, there were 50,000. I don't need to tell you what a pain it will be to sort! I now have a new hobby. 

 

Would I be correct in assuming the free space wiping isn't worth a tinkers D....? 

[AdvancedSetup]

When done properly 1 pass wipe is enough to prevent any recovery on modern drivers.  The 35 pass Gutmann writeup was from well over a decade ago with different drives and technology.

 

These tools should actually wipe the data and prevent any type of recovery

 

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

 

http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultrasentry.html

 

http://www.east-tec.com/eraser/

[CWB]

and , you may find that many of those "jpeg/image" files are rather small and/or have nothing to do with the pictures you want to recover .

say ... pieces and chunks from old web pages , emails and such .

 

as for why the files that were recovered were recoverable in the first place , there are other variables that would need to be known (ie : automatic backup of certain files/folders , etc .) .

free space wiping is ok to perform .

 

35 passes ...

 

the link that advanced setup made to "eraser" is a good choice ... i have used it for quite some time (years) .

there has been only once that there was a problem/interaction with it and a couple of programs ... one of the fellows here helped me figure it out .

 

(in the army we used something called "fuji packs" to destroy "sensitive materials" ... an incendiary device that melted/burnt through ; secure deletion with an attitude)