Software for deleting?(added electron scanning microscope ?)

[fatboy]

I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine the other day and we got to talking about deleting files. He said there is nothing you can do to delete a file totally of your harddrive. It will always leave an image burned on the disk. Now I am not saying I don't believe him because I do go along with what he was saying, I just want some other opions on this.


***Even with this program can't someone use a electron scanning microscope to still see what is on the hard drive****

 

[Spiff]

If the space has not been written over since the deletion, then it is possible to recover data with third party system utilities.

 

[Technonut]

Check out Clean Disk Security

 

[Mark R]

While a magnetic force microscope or similar device can retrieve very faint traces of data from a magnetic disk, it's a difficult and time consuming process.

I only know of one data recovery company that offers this service, and even then only for floppy disks - they even go on to warn that it is extremely time consuming and appallingly expensive. I think several weeks would be an reasonable time frame for recovering a floppy disk which has been overwritten multiple times. Also, don't forget you'll be paying several hundred $ per hour for this service.

I doubt even the FBI would bother with this technique.