Recycle bin Erase erase the hard disk as well?

[WinterJ]

If i dump things into the recycle bin to be deleted then I run Eraser on the recycle bin does it just wipe the items in the recycle bin? Or, does it also erase where the items were originally on the hard disk and they can't be recovered separately recovering the hard drive? In other words if I just run it on the recycle bin, is it a one stop shop to having everything erased or do i have to run it on the recycle bin AND the hard drive (unused space AFTER recycle bin has been emptied and eraser ran on it)?

Do i have to "empty recycle bin" after running erase on its contents, or are they already erased and it will empty itself and show nothing?

I

 

[DavidHB]

If i dump things into the recycle bin to be deleted then I run Eraser on the recycle bin does it just wipe the items in the recycle bin? Or, does it also erase where the items were originally on the hard disk and they can't be recovered separately recovering the hard drive? In other words if I just run it on the recycle bin, is it a one stop shop to having everything erased or do i have to run it on the recycle bin AND the hard drive (unused space AFTER recycle bin has been emptied and eraser ran on it)?

This is quite a nice question, and I'm glad you asked it.

NTFS (which is probably what you are using) is, believe it or not, not publicly documented by Microsoft. But, as far as I know, when you move a file to the Recycle Bin, the file data is not moved; all that happens is that the directory pointer to the file changes from the original folder to the Recycle Bin folder. So, when you erase the contents of the Bin, you are erasing the original data, not a copy. There are complications with e.g. shadow copies, but Eraser handles those. The way to test this is to try recovering the erased files with a file recovery program. If you can, let us know.

Do i have to "empty recycle bin" after running erase on its contents, or are they already erased and it will empty itself and show nothing?

Erasing the contents empties the Recycle Bin, and the icon changes to mark that fact.

David