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Sean Troy
12-21-2010, 2:13 PM
Running XP. Is there a way to permently delete images you no longer need or want from the hard drive? I can still find pictures if I do a file/image search on the computer that I know I deleted a long time ago. Thanks, Sean

Chuck Wintle
12-21-2010, 2:21 PM
yes you can do a search of the entire hard drive and delete all instances you fine. for images the search will be *.jpg or *.png. and for files, like word or pdf its the same criteria...*.doc or *.pdf. Delete all instances you find.

Lex Boegen
12-21-2010, 2:48 PM
Running XP. Is there a way to permently delete images you no longer need or want from the hard drive? I can still find pictures if I do a file/image search on the computer that I know I deleted a long time ago. Thanks, Sean

Windows never "deletes" a file, technically speaking (and neither does any other commonly-available operating system). What it does is mark the file listing in your computer's directory, and makes those tracks on your hard disk available for re-use. It replaces the first character of the file name with an asterisk, so that Windows won't show that file, but you can easily find it and undelete it with a special utility program. Just Google for "Windows XP file shredder" and you'll find lots of programs, some of them free. I mostly use Linux and Mac OS X these days, so I can't give you a specific recommendation for XP.

Dan Hintz
12-21-2010, 2:54 PM
Lex,

I'm sure in this case Sean is coming across images stored in temp directories, like the FireFox cache, et al. Deleted files won't show up on a standard Windows search...

Sean Troy
12-21-2010, 7:49 PM
Lot less show up after clearing cache and temp files. thanks all.