Delete all traces of a file downloaded

How to Remove Remnants of Uninstalled Software? Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit Summary : You may have installed some programs and decide to uninstall certain ones. Tip: When making some changes to your Windows Registry, be very careful. And you should back up Windows Registry to avoid system accidents after the change. Read More. Scroll down for the next news Scroll down. Apart from unlawful file removal of files e.

Also, file recovery could be very useful after surviving a malware attack. This post covers how files are stored, how they are recovered, why they aren't deleted permanently by default, and how to permanently delete them. First, it is important to know how your OS places files in your hard disks. Your files are saved on the hard disk in small pieces or chunks. Data chunks are usually scattered all over the memory architecture.

File Mangers of your Operating System keeps track of your files by knowing the addresses or links to all the chunks mentioned earlier. These are called inode numbers. When you delete a file, your OS simply removes the data it has stored about these links or inode values. What really happens when you delete a file is that the link is removed from the table in the File Manager System that's keeping track of the file.

From the explanation above, you'll observe that the data is still there. All that was tempered with are the links to the data they contain. Hard Disk Drives do not delete data, they simply overwrite them. Generally, recovery tools simply check for data without this inode values or links pointing to them on the disk in question.

Otherwise, shred the drive. Improve this answer. Mark Buffalo Mark Buffalo This was the kind of answer I was looking for! May I ask what the purpose of 11 is? I'm guessing that has to do with cooling down the HDD after using the cipher utility?

No, so nothing is found in your RAM. It's usually gone after 10 minutes, if I recall correctly. I put 20 because my tinfoil hat senses were tingling. Oops, I forgot the pagefile and system restore. Might want to take those off as well. The Honest Truth Answer: Unless you physically destroy the drive by putting it through a metal shredder, there is no way to completely prevent that information from having a chance to be recovered by a skillful individual.

Allison Wilson Allison Wilson 2 2 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. This is also incorrect. Shredding the drive is an incredibly naive and extreme option that is totally unnecessary, and the OP wants to remove the data without reformatting or anything like that.

Not even magnetic-force microscopy can reliably pick up a 7-pass rewrite — Mark Buffalo. Is it extreme, really? A couple hundred dollars for a control that stops state level actors sounds like a bargain to me! We have many questions on this already here, so have a good look round. Jesse Pardue Jesse Pardue 11 2 2 bronze badges. And the suggestion to use two hard drives and boot one is also a good idea. However, destroying the drive isn't really necessary.

My1 My1 2 2 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges. Community Bot 1. How it works NTFS, like other file system, goal is to maintain a logical map of file to the disk. The logical representation : [file1, empty, file2, empty, file3, file4, Certainly wouldn't want CCleaner erasing free space, too easy for something like that to go wrong. Besides Eraser does that well enough if you really want that. Maybe I should ask Eraser to make a Portable Eraser. I want eraser to erase things without tracks being left.

I find that CCleaner does a decent job of erasing so that files are not recoverable - at least by a novice. This would be a marvelous improvement for a future release of CCleaner - to destroy wiped file names as well as their contents. You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. Anyone can retrieve your data by taking the assistance of a data recovery tool.

Therefore, you should use Stellar BitRaser for the file if you want to erase download history from your browser with no recovery option.

The tool has an easy to use interface that can be used to permanently erase your files, system traces, applications, and more. Here, you can see various other tools and features listed as well. Step 3: As you select the Internet Activities option, it will display a list of all the web browsers that are installed on your system.

BitRaser supports all the leading web browsers by default. Step 4: To clear download history of a browser, simply select the browser and click on the "Erase Now" button. After following these simple steps, you would be able to clear download history from your browser without much trouble.