Unwanted porn pics on my backup hard drive

[Maxfun1]

While getting more organized about backing up my computer, I accidentally deleted off the computer an entire folder with 48 files AND off a 1 Terabyte backup hard drive. So I downloaded a file recovery program, and tried to "recover" the 48 files off the BACKUP hard drive. To my surprise the program recovered 3620 files which I paged through looking for my 48. To my surprise I found naked pics of my son and his friends having some sort of party. Ouch and yikes, his Mom would be VERY upset. When we used the backup hard drive 6 years ago to back up his computer, I'm sure he would have deleted those photos. So be warned, even though you "permanently" delete a photo, it may still be recoverable on your hard drive and create problems for you years later. Apparently, "Shredding" a file makes it more "unrecoverable", which I did to my son's pics and said nothing to him..

 

[PastMaster]

While getting more organized about backing up my computer, I accidentally deleted off the computer an entire folder with 48 files AND off a 1 Terabyte backup hard drive. So I downloaded a file recovery program, and tried to "recover" the 48 files off the BACKUP hard drive. To my surprise the program recovered 3620 files which I paged through looking for my 48. To my surprise I found naked pics of my son and his friends having some sort of party. Ouch and yikes, his Mom would be VERY upset. When we used the backup hard drive 6 years ago to back up his computer, I'm sure he would have deleted those photos. So be warned, even though you "permanently" delete a photo, it may still be recoverable on your hard drive and create problems for you years later. Apparently, "Shredding" a file makes it more "unrecoverable", which I did to my son's pics and said nothing to him..

yes - file shredder - or there is another program called activekilldisk that actually overwrites data other data.
If you want to make sure that the files you are deleting are gone - use something like those.
Any time you scrap a PC - take the disk our, and either physically destroy it,shred it (there are places that will do that) or use one of the data removal programs. There are people what will take old computers and recover their disks and steal your information.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Transfer to thumbdrive and stick in microwave.

 

[tnhardon]

As a whole, I would generally try to avoid saving files like these on my computer, due to how difficult they can be to remove and the high likelihood they’ll end up on a backup somewhere. There are lots of Cloud options (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.) where you can easily save files without having to worry about them being found on your desktop.

 

[Beholders_Eye]

I have used a file shredder program called 'Eraser' on my Windows 10 desktop for some years. As far as I can tell, it does a competent job. I.e., a recovery program does not find any files that I shredded.

https://eraser.heidi.ie/

 

[FL30]

While getting more organized about backing up my computer, I accidentally deleted off the computer an entire folder with 48 files AND off a 1 Terabyte backup hard drive. So I downloaded a file recovery program, and tried to "recover" the 48 files off the BACKUP hard drive. To my surprise the program recovered 3620 files which I paged through looking for my 48. To my surprise I found naked pics of my son and his friends having some sort of party. Ouch and yikes, his Mom would be VERY upset. When we used the backup hard drive 6 years ago to back up his computer, I'm sure he would have deleted those photos. So be warned, even though you "permanently" delete a photo, it may still be recoverable on your hard drive and create problems for you years later. Apparently, "Shredding" a file makes it more "unrecoverable", which I did to my son's pics and said nothing to him..

that is why you actually destroy a hard drive. remove from computer and smash into smaller pieces with a hammer or anything else that you can think of to smash it, so it won't work.

 

[UtilityCurve]

that is why you actually destroy a hard drive. remove from computer and smash into smaller pieces with a hammer or anything else that you can think of to smash it, so it won't work.

Well yes, if you don't need the hard drive any longer.

But if you're going to reuse it, overwriting all the sectors will stymie all but the FBI and NSA. Recommend DBAN: https://dban.org/