Is there an app that completely erases data deleted from the recycling bin. The files need to be erased so that they cannot be recovered with a program.
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How about looking at the list of apps already here??
Hint: it has 'eraser' in the name.
I've tried using eraser, but there is no way you can erase the deleted items from the recycle bin. I know you can erase the free space, but does that include items emptied from the recycle bin? Also, I saw a couple of posts about using eraserl.exe in the command line, but I don't really know what that means or how to do that. I guess I need a little help on that.
Files deleted from the recycle bin become free space, just like other files. There's nothing special about it.
Vintage!
I know there are programs that can recover emptied files, but is there some thing that erases them completely without erasing the rest of the free space? I have 60gb of free space and that would take forever to rewrite all of that.
The program would have to know which sectors specifically to erase. The only way to detect which sectors have never been used would be if there were a huge area of zeros. If you have ever had the drive filled to capacity or even near-capacity, it would be faster to do everything. Not that I've looked very hard, but I don't know of any program that would look for a chunk of zeros at the end of the disk. Most such programs can't even handle free space.
Vintage!
I think I see what you mean, I'm running WinXP SP2 and the recycle bin is a folder named RECYCLER. When I selected that folder and directed Eraser to erase it's contents, it reported there was nothing to delete. When I subsequently browsed the recycle bin, it had the same contents as before. I've posted a request on the Eraser Fora for more info.
Once you've deleted a file (no recycle bin) or emptied the recycle bin, you're only option is to erase the free space. To avoid this, do not use the recycle bin or simply delete files, use eraser instead to wipe the files securely.
Your other option is to delete files to the recycle bin, then use eraser to securely wipe the recycle bin. You can do this from the GUI, or with the eraserl commandline -
eraserl.exe -recycled -method DoD_E -resultsonerror
You can substitute another erasing method if you want. Double click the eraserl.exe file to get the full set of commandline options.