Questions. I have a couple of old computers that I will be discarding, so I took out the hard drive and bought a device to retrieve some old files and pictures - some of which were deleted by me a while ago. When I place the hard drive into the new external hard drive device, connect what needs to be connected and get the info up on my new computer, very few old files and pictures come up. I thought any pictures or files downloaded, even though deleted could be retreived through this device.  I am wrong?

Bob

I should say that I'm not endorsing nor do I have any experience using these with the exception of the last one for permanently and securely wiping drives.

A program like this one can be used for recovering deleted files in some cases:

Easeus Data Recovery Wizard Free Edition

or

Pandora Recovery

If you want to make absolutely sure that the data is permanently wiped from the drive for security reasons, you need to use a program like this one:

Active Kill Disk Hard Drive Eraser

These types of programs actually write random "junk" data bits over the drive multiple times. That's the most secure way of making sure the data is gone. Simply deleting a file does not remove it. The file still exists on the drive. It's just removed from the "table of contents" to put it in layperson terms. There are plenty of programs for recovering deleting files like Neil stated, so you can find plenty of others in addition to the one I linked to above, some of which are free, others are not. Until a program write over that data, the file is recoverable and even then it may be partially recoverable.

Shane

Old, smaller drives aren't worth much anyway, so why not use the fastest, most effective data eraser:

Bob,
     My question to you is this - are you looking in the right place for the files that you seek?  Some may be stored under your user profile, and some may be in other areas on the hard drive.  Is your question more about how to find the files, or how to get rid of the files from the old drive? 

 

Bob,

I have an external drive adapter as well, and depending on the file's status, you might have to pull a favor from Shane to help you out over the phone changing things like read only and privileges, because when the hard drive saw itself inside the computer originally, the operating system allowed you to access and change things as the administrator.  With it mounted externally to another operating system (so basically the OS on the external drive isn't running) it doesn't know you're still the administrator with the full privileges.

Pics on cell phones can be retrieved just like camera memory cards, but again you will need to buy software and have a connection to the phone to try to capture them.  I've never found (at least anything that worked) free software to do that, however I don't remember ever paying more than around $80 for file/data retrieval software.

Software for deleting or obliterating stuff on cell phones, yes, but I'd have to look up what software I have and you still need to connect the cell phone to the computer to do it.  It's much easier to do a full reset on a cell phone with the help of your service provider.  They can tell you what buttons to press, selections to make and codes to enter to wipe off everything and put it in factory original state.  I've done that many times when selling or donating old phones and each phone was a different method.  It wasn't always the first or second person I spoke to at my cell provider's tech support that knew how to do it, but the "real techs" do and once you reach them by phone, they'll help you get it done in just a few minutes.  If it's an iPhone, contact Apple tech support.  In all of my cases, the local cell store tech support was worthless.

From your previous post, I thought you were trying to recover photos from your cell phone.  I guess you meant you want to wipe them off forever.

Bob, try this: Smart Undelete

You might be able to get some back, but chances of getting everything restored are slim if you used the HD at all after deleting files. the OS will mark sectors with deleted data as available to write on. Unfortunately a bitmap like a jpg file will need ALL the data to be usable, whereas a text file you can recover partial pieces and have it be somewhat useful.

 Thanks All,

 I have tried quite a few of these recovery programs with virtually the same results - almost nothing being retrieved - and  what did come back was little "silly" pics and animations and what nots.
 Same thing for files and word doc. But the good news is that was nothing critically important anyhow; just some nice family pics and simple files.
 
 I also tried another program to search the C drive on my current computer and it came up with thousands of images - some from God knows where - CNN, News, album covers, silly cartoon faces, etc. and many pics of catalog items that I had apparently looked at, but there was not really one pic that I downloaded from my camera to computer that I  deleted and sent to the recycle bin that was retrievable.
Correct, it seems once an item is so deleted, it is gone for good and only maybe retrievable through a company that specializes in that and is very expensive.
Lesson learned!

Bob