When you delete a PC file, the file does not really go away, only your ability to connect to it. So how do you locate and erase (from your hard-drive) what you've deleted? In other words, do I have to reformat my computer to rid myself of deleted files?
by 
Anonymous
ANSWERS: 6
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I would think that defragging your drive should suffice.
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... there are numerous "eraser" programs that will use file allocation table pointers to go to the first byte of the file and over write everything with all ones, all the way to the last byte, then over write again with all zeros, repeating with 7 or more over writes of each 1 & 0 ... then deleted the file ... this makes the file totally unrecoverable ... ... here is just one ... the first in a long list of Google results ... http://www.heidi.ie/node/6 .
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Just to add a little to Takei Shihan's answer (in case you don't already know this): All the computer has on the hard drive are ones and zeroes. It stores information on the drive but using "addresses" to determine the location on the drive. The alternation of the ones and zeroes are in a form of counting called "binomial." So, by filling the entire file with ones and overwriting with zeroes it completely blanks out the file and leaves that portion of the hd as if it had never been used. I can't remember for sure but I believe that you can accomplish the same thing by defragging the hd after the file is deleted.
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hmmmmm...makes me wonder what you are so intent on hiding.
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For those of you thinking that once you've deleted a file, it's gone, think again. Go to http://www.recuva.com/ and download their recovery application (for free) and find out you're WRONG! It will bring up much of what you thought was gone. I found 237,000 files I thought had been deleted. Once you have them listed, check all of them and right click for choices. Clink "Securely Erase" and then they will go away and not be retrievable.
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You can get a file shredder
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