Just a reminder that nothing you delete actually gets deleted.

[AllTracTurbo]

Kind of a funny story that reminded me that nothing actually gets deleted from the hard drive until it gets written over.

I just started using torrents and I was downloading an .avi file. The file just started, but I wanted to see if I could preview it. I open the file and I was a little confused b/c it didn't look like I thought it would. And then I seen Kevin Bacon and I was really confused.

Then I realised that I was actually watching a movie that I backed up about a month earlier and deleted from the hard drive. I didn't recognise it b/c I haven't seen it yet.

UTorrent allocates the full file size that it needs on the hard drive when it starts to download and both the file I was downloading and the file that was eraced from that spot on the hard drive were able to play in the video player I was using.

I think you can turn that feature off, but then your files would be fragmented.

So, be carefull with what you do download on your "private time" lol. Someone might just happen to see it even though you deleted it.

I'm downloading a video now and I just did the same thing again to see what's on the hard drive and it worked. It was another movie. Not the same as last time though.

I'm sure theres ways to copy all the files off of an eraced hard drive, but I thought it was kind of cool that it was as easy as allocating another file there and playing it.

[moogly]

Because when you delete a file on your drive, you don't reset each bit, only the entry about the file in MFT.

More info: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=419339#p419339

[AllTracTurbo]

Thanks, I didn't know about that option.

For anyone else intersted, you can set diskio.no_zero in advanced options to false and that will erace the section of the hard drive that it will be saving to. It will be slower and more work for the hard drive, but that way you can't access the files that were previously there.

I would suggest leaving it set to true for better performance. Plus, nobody uses torrents on this computer but me and it's fun to see what use to be there.