Right click and delete. I’m thankful to whoever invented that command; as well, you should be too. This week’s first two articles went the way of my computer’s recycle bin because they were boring and poorly written. Thank you Microsoft.
You probably didn’t want to read about my twenty minute first date and how she insulted me between texting her friends. My friend’s new car with a myriad of confusing controls was a terrible article too. Hopefully I won’t bore you too much with this week’s article about deleted documents.
So, you delete a document and it’s deleted forever, right? Wrong. Actually, the file sits around until it’s overwritten by something else. It could be weeks or years before the file is undetectable. Time for me to take a dry subject and make it fun.
I’ve taken many unsavory pictures of myself and for one reason or another decided they didn’t make the cut. Maybe I look fat or too old, for whatever reason I decide to delete them. Even though I hit delete, the file is still lingering on my hard drive.
I chose to use a picture as an example because, well, it’s easier to understand. Every file has the file data along with something called a header. Data is easy to understand, it’s the header part that’s confusing. The header is metadata that tells the operating system the file’s characteristics. Metadata serves no useful purpose to the average user.
Deleting a file doesn’t actually mean the file is gone. The operating system (in my case Windows) strips the header from the file which lets Windows know there is free space. Free space, also called slack, can be used for extra storage in the future. But, because Windows stores files in fragments, they can linger for a very long time.
When I store selfies on my PC the file isn’t written to the hard drive in a continuous fashion. Rather fragments, or bits and pieces, of the pictures are spread over the surface of the drive. I liken it to pieces of pepperoni spread over a pizza.
At the same time the pictures are saved to the drive, Windows creates a file header that tells the file size, type of file and where all those pieces of pepperoni are located. When the file is opened, Windows remaps the pepperoni pieces back together to form a usable picture or document.
Right clicking and deleting a picture only removes the file header, leaving behind all those pieces of pepperoni. As new files are saved to the hard drive a piece of pepperoni may be deleted until eventually all the pepperoni is covered. Perhaps the new files are pieces of anchovy (just go with it).
Unlike pizza toppings, files don’t go bad unless the storage device fails or the data is completely overwritten. At some point we all upgrade our equipment and either put our old computers and devices in storage or dispose of them. Simply getting rid of old equipment isn’t a good idea because even deleted data can be resurrected.
The very best way to dispose of old equipment that may contain personal data is to physically destroy the hard drive or data storage device. Making the hard drive completely inoperable eliminates the probability of someone retrieving old data. Chances are most people don’t have the paraphernalia and software to correctly pull data from your old equipment, there is still a small chance. If someone were to reconstruct my data they would find some bad article and lots of weird pictures.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)