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Deleting the file completely from the hard disk.

Lot of people usually ask this type of question. How do I get rid of my files completely from the storage device(Especially Hard disk).



To answer this question let us know how the hard disk stores your information.


  1. All you data is stored in the magnetic disk rotating at above 5000 rpm(Speeds may vary).
  2. This magnetic disk is called platter.
  3. The platter is made of magnetic material and coated with magnetic particles.
  4. Your data is just the arrangement of particles.
      The platter's complete address is very huge and complex to handle. To solve this the platter is divided into tracks and sectors. On top of this a file system is deployed(A set of algorithm and program to keep track of your data). Which is controlled by Operating System.

     The file system further divides the space into blocks(Usually you see this while formatting disk as Allocation size). The data is stored along the blocks.

The lower the block size the lower performance & efficient storage utilization.
The higher the block size higher the performance & less efficient storage utilization.

  This is all about the basics.


Now lets jump on to the topic.

  1. When ever you copy a file to disk to is stored and the starting & ending file pointer is created and stored.
  2. This helps in retrieval process.
  3. But when you delete a file It takes very less time than copying.
  4. In theory the amount of time required to copy == amount of time required to delete.
  5. But while deletion process only the file pointers are deleted and the blocks in which the files is stored is counted as a free space. 
  6. The disk only performs the overwriting and not exactly deleting.
Now from the Einstein's theory Just kidding....

     To delete your complete HDD(Disk) you need to copy equivalent amount of some useless data.
This can be quite a bit annoying. What if you want to delete a particular file?


We have solution:

    There are software like file shredder. This will help you to destroy your files to the level in which you specify. It is open source and completely free. Link to download file shredder http://www.fileshredder.org/

For any queries comment below.

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