huntress
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can anything be truly deleted?
My co-worker asked me to come here and ask about something that happened to him. He downloaded a screensaver on his company laptop, then deleted it when he had to turn it into the main office. I am unsure of the specifics but he got into hot water when the screensaver was found offensive by some women in the office. I don't know if they were computer programmers who were attending to the laptop or not, but my co-worker wants to know if there is anyway to delete something so it can not be brought up again by anyone.
There are a number of utilities that will do this but you can do it manually. Check the file size for the one in question, then copy another file of inoffensive material that is bigger than it over the original. Then copy another file that is smaller over this copy. Then delete the file. There would not be much of the original left and it would be very difficult to recover even the few bytes that might remain. You can repeat this a number of times using a file you created yourself full of garbage characters without spaces if you are really keen to wipe it out. :)
You also have to keep in mind that you'll have to wipe your internet temporary files, your swapfile should be cleaned, history, recent files and maybe some other things also.
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If you use Norton Speed Disk, there is an option to "Wipe Free Space". This will zero out unused space on your hard drive.
Cheers!