Computer Essential

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by manasecret

Simply making sure to rewrite over the actual data of your files is sufficient, which is probably one of the options below Gutmann.

You'd be amazed at what you can recover from a "secure deletion." You can download government-level programs (like KillDisc) that will run a 'thorough' deletion process. But it takes a long time as the program literary writes and re-writes over every byte of space on the hard disk. The guys at MIT have recovered 'securely deleted data.' And, if optical scientists can recover data from charred hard drives in the 9/11 rubble.....

It's all kind of pointless for the casual user though.