hard drive data/diles

[ineeedhelp]

i have a few questions. What files and emails and such can be recovered from a hard drive? for instance... i have a closed yahoo account, can emails sent and received on my pc from this account be recovered? and i have an open yahoo account also. so i assume these can be found. and how exactly does that work? is there a way i can find these files and erase them? also, does it work the same for IM's (logs) the screen name is no longer active, and i always had my options set to not archive, but can these logs also be found on my pc? please help?

 

[americanmcneil]

To answer your overall question, can your data stored on your computer from these programs be recovered, yes if you know where to look for them. Even if you found said files and deleted them and then emptied your trashcan, with the right software tools that data can be recovered. If you are worried about data disposal, there are free programs out there (google it, thats what i do) that will let you truely delete a file as they actually overwrite the file several times with random 1s and 0s. Remember, when you delete something, the file information is still there, it just has had a tag added to it that says "hey, im not here, noone can se me, you can overwrite me with other data if you need this space". Again, with the proper software that tag can be removed and the data is "recovered".

As far as chat logs from IMs, im not sure where those logs would be stored.

 

[wahnula]

Yahoo is a web-based email. As far as I know, email data is stored on yahoo servers, not your local PC. If there was any local data it would be stored in browser cache, simple to purge. Yahoo keeps mail for X amount of time on a deleted account but there are several copies on the various mailservers. Those cannot be deleted by you.

For IM programs, I am not familiar with their operation (yes I know I am not 'with it'), but the first step would be to uninstall the program in Add/Remove Programs and delete any folders pertaining to the service. Again, several copies of your chats stay on the various chat servers. There are several "file shredders" available as freeware. they overwrite unused space with zeroes as many times as you like once a file is deleted, but will not delete the versions on the servers.

If you want to make sure your PC is squeaky-clean backup all known data you want to keep, do NOT back up your profile, just your "My Documents" folder and emails from your email client.

Then, before re-install, use your drive maker's utility to write zeros to the entire drive, make (5) passes and reload Windows.