un-emptying the recyling bin?

**volpesmagnus** · January 13, 2008, 10:31 AM

is there a way to do such a thing. my brother says you can, but he wont tell me how to. i thought that whatever you deleted from the recycling bin could never be retrieved. He also said that he could look at anything ive ever deleted on my computer, which is quite a lot.

So could anyone here tell me how to un-empty (i think thats how he phrased it) my recycling bin, or how to stop someone else from doing that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
yay, my first post!!

**Domnul Ceaşcă** · January 13, 2008, 10:39 AM

There are certain programs that can do this, but not all files that you deleted can be "ressurected", however, you can see the name of everything you have deleted, and the files only dissapear if you reformat your computer.

**volpesmagnus** · January 13, 2008, 11:07 AM

see, i think my brother may be trying to blackmail me( we dont get along all that well) and he claims he can find something on my computer to do this with( im not sure what all he would find, ive had this computer for a while) so i want to make sure he cant do anything on my computer to blackmail me

**Domnul Ceaşcă** · January 13, 2008, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by volpesmagnus

see, i think my brother may be trying to blackmail me( we dont get along all that well) and he claims he can find something on my computer to do this with( im not sure what all he would find, ive had this computer for a while) so i want to make sure he cant do anything on my computer to blackmail me

Well i don`t know how old you are, but is he trying to blackmail you with some porn that you had on your computer and you don`t want your parents to find out, cuz that would be really funny?

If you want to be "blackmail secure", reformat your computer, that way, he can`t blackmail you, since there wouldn`t be nothing to have, you get the picture.

**volpesmagnus** · January 13, 2008, 11:26 AM

so how exactly do you reformat a computer? does it screw anything up?

and no i dont have porn on my computer, just old documents

thanks for the help

**Ummagumma** · January 13, 2008, 11:30 AM

Every dirty little picture or embarrassing poem or whatever is on your PC. If he has the tools and knowledge, even a reformat wont help. You need to 'shred' the disk. (This copies and recopies random data onto the disk to prevent any scan software from uncovering old data). Unless he has done some form of forensic computer science course I wouldn't be too worried by it though.

**Domnul Ceaşcă** · January 13, 2008, 11:39 AM

Well, you bassicaly have to reinstall windows in order to reformat your hard disk, but you should also know that if you reformat your hard disk, you will also lose everything else you had on it. I don`t know how to explain it step by step, so you should read this. Choose the windows you have, and what you want to do.

**spartan_phalanx** · January 14, 2008, 03:04 AM

Others have pointed out the most common ways to accomplish what you want but as also been pointed out the average person of program will not likely be ably to 'recover' the data after a reformat. You would need to zero-fill the drive overwriting the data. This would also require a new install of your OS.

The other alternative that hasn't been mentioned is to fill the drive up as full as possible with data/files. Then delete the filler data/files and possibly do it again. This would overwrite all but the minimal amount that is left when you fill the hard drive.

Ultimately a clean reformat is probably the best route though.

**Freddie** · January 14, 2008, 05:06 AM

Well you might want to read this for future knowledge.

What happens is when data is deleted (either recycle bin emptied or just deleted and not going to the bin) that data is still on your hard drive as series of 0's and 1's, there are data recovery programmes (not expensive there might even been a free one somewhere) that can read these 0’s and 1’s and interpret what that data strong once was. So long as that string hasn’t been written over by new data it can still be recovered. Even reformatting won’t help help you those 0’s and 1’s will still be there.

Now lets say you a dirty little teenage who has been watching adult videos and you would rather you mother not find out about it yet your brother is blackmailing you. You have deleted the data but it can still be recovered by the method outlined above. What you do, is go to your DVD collection, rip all the movies on to your on hard drive until it is full, delete them, then do the same again then delete them. Your brother doesn’t stand a chance of getting that data back. However if your really paranoid you can get a programme that will blast random 0’s and 1’s on the drive which will scramble all the deleted data strings making them totally unreadable.

**volpesmagnus** · January 14, 2008, 11:12 AM

so how exactly do you rip movies onto a hard drive? im not very good with computers unfortunatly.
thanks again for your help guys

**Freddie** · January 14, 2008, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by volpesmagnus

so how exactly do you rip movies onto a hard drive? im not very good with computers unfortunatly.
thanks again for your help guys

Well you can use this programme called DVD Decrypter to rip the movies. It doesn't have to be DVD's it can be games if you want, new games like Med2TW take up 7.5 Gb's of space a time. You just need some way to fill it up before you delete it.

**volpesmagnus** · January 14, 2008, 01:42 PM

now do i have to completely fill up my computer before deleting the stuff or can i install something then delete it, install, delete, ext?
also, can i install the same thing more than once(like Med2) since it is so big?
another thing (im just full of questions it seems) what does ripping a DVD do?

**Freddie** · January 14, 2008, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by volpesmagnus

now do i have to completely fill up my computer before deleting the stuff or can i install something then delete it, install, delete, ext?
also, can i install the same thing more than once(like Med2) since it is so big?

You could do that; just go into Windows explorer c: drive/Program Files/Sega and copy and paste the Med2 directory. I would just prefer to do with separate items since it makes it hard to decrypt any overwrite, but I wouldn’t worry about it that much.

**volpesmagnus** · January 14, 2008, 02:09 PM

o yea another question, how do i know when i have completely overwritten the data with games and stuff?
ive already installed and deleted M2TW, RTW, and Barbarian Invasion

**Freddie** · January 14, 2008, 02:17 PM

Originally Posted by volpesmagnus

o yea another question, how do i know when i have completely overwritten the data with games and stuff?
ive already installed and deleted M2TW, RTW, and Barbarian Invasion

Download and install this. Run it and see if you can find any of the files your don't want to be recovered. If you can see them, recover it and try and open it. Hopefully it will have become corrupted, if not you will just have to keep installing and deleting stuff. Rinse and repeat.

**Simetrical** · January 14, 2008, 05:10 PM

I recommend you call your brother's bluff and say you won't believe him unless he can come up with a file. If he can't, which will probably be the case, ignore him.

**Ummagumma** · January 14, 2008, 05:16 PM

Originally Posted by Simetrical

I recommend you call your brother's bluff and say you won't believe him unless he can come up with a file. If he can't, which will probably be the case, ignore him.

Probably the best solution - unless you know he has studied forensic computing or similar.

**allthesedamnnamesaretaken** · January 15, 2008, 02:46 PM

Spybot Search and Destroy comes with a shredder function that fills a file with random 1's and 0's before it gets deleted. no way of recovering any useful data. I believe it's an advanced tool/option that you have to enable in the options. And you don't have to delete your pr0n. just mount an encrypted hidden file system and password protect it.

edit: here is a good open source encryption program: http://www.truecrypt.org/