IDEA: to Shred a file already in Recycle Bin

[Mr.Fancypants]

Often times I look in my Windows XP Recycle Bin and see something I probably should have shredded rather than merely deleted.

If I'm not really (really) careful about what I'm doing, I'll "Restore" that sensitive file to some unknown place, intending to properly shred the darn thing.
Drat!  Uh,... What was that filename again?  And where is it now?

weeks (or months) later...
Damn!  There's that super-sensitive file I wanted to shred!  (heart attack) I hope nobody else saw it.

Sure would be handy if I could just shred that file directly from the recycle bin somehow.

[f0dder]

Just restore the file and then shred it.

When you "delete" a file to the recycle bin, it's not actually deleted, but moved to a special hidden folder on your harddrive. If you restore the file, it's just moved back to it's old location. This moving back and forth doesn't move the actual file data, just the "name that points to it".

So: restore, shred, (shift+)delete

[mouser]

better:

If you install the excellent free shredding tool called Eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/), it adds an option to the Recycle Bin right click context menu that will shred the contents of your recycle bin.  Too bad it doesn't work on individual files inside the recycle bin because i think this is a very smart request by Fancypants, but it comes close in terms of use.

Fancy - might i suggest that you email the author of Eraser and suggest he add this functionality - it seems to me a very good idea.  And let us know what he (or she) says!

[lanux128]

If I'm not really (really) careful about what I'm doing, I'll "Restore" that sensitive file to some unknown place, intending to properly shred the darn thing.
Drat!  Uh,... What was that filename again?  And where is it now?

instead of using the restore function, you can also drag the item to your desktop then shred it to your hearts content.. but then again, a tool that can work within the Recycle Bin would prove to be useful too..

[f0dder]

Just make sure that if you drag something from the recycle bin, drag it somewhere on the same partition the file was deleted from - otherwise the file data on the original partition will not be shredded, and you'll have a copy of the data on the partition you drag to.

[Clive]

I too hope for a shredder that will shred individual files in the recycle bin.
Whilst we're on the topic of shredding - how about e-mails? None of the searches that I have done, for shredders, have ever turned up an e-mail shredder and surely there are sensitive e-mails that many people would want to shred as much if not more than their files.

[mouser]

great idea - this sounds like something that should be built into email clients.

[alxwz]

Not exactly on-topic, and although I know that there are some Mac-haters around  :

There was a nice utility for Mac OS <X that gave you an intermediate stop on the way to the recycle bin:
Trash Bag (http://www.magma.ca/~awolsp/).
It was a folder with the icon - surprise - of a trash bag that was essentially a regular folder, but with a "flush" function so  you could dump all the files to the recycle bin (trash).
That way you could put items you wanted to dispose some time in the future in there, and (unlike items in the trash) you could still work with them in the meantime.
I'd love to see that on Windows.

[Mr.Fancypants]

I tried Eraser for a while.  For whatever reason, it was unstable on this computer.  It allowed me to shred from the right click menu.  But I had to uninstall it to restore stability.
I wrote the author, but got no reply.

Lanux128 pointed out something I never knew.  Any file in the Recycle Bin can be dragged to the Desktop for handling.  (Rather than Restoring to wherever place it may have been deleted from.)  That allows me to  drop that file in a separate Shredder.  It's stable. It's simple enough.  It works.  It will suffice for my purposes.

I hope our ideas here turn into something. 

[f0dder]

Mr.Fancypants: if you've deleted something from another partition than where your windows install resides, then drag that deleted file to your desktop, then my warning also applies.

[Entr0pic]

If you select a file in the recycle bin and press "Delete" on your keyboard, it is deleted permanently.

What's the big deal again?

[Veign]

If you select a file in the recycle bin and press "Delete" on your keyboard, it is deleted permanently.

What's the big deal again?

-Entr0pic (February 04, 2007, 03:06 PM)

Delete does not mean unrecoverable.  Shredding a file usually refers to making it and the information unrecoverable or traceable