It is not really gone until it is overwritten. Good or bad?

So you placed all your reading resources on your flash drive or on your computer but something terrible happens. You deleted them by mistake or you accidentally formatted the hard drive. It may be possible that you can recover all your deleted files. Information is stored in unique patterns of 0's and 1's. When a file is deleted, the computer marks that area of the disk as being able to receive new data. The file remains until new information is saved to that area, replacing the deleted file for good. Recovering a file depends on whether or not it was overwritten. "Recuva" is a powerful freeware that can recover all your deleted files that are not overwritten. You can also set it to recover specific files such as pictures, music, videos.

If you inadvertently deleted a file, do not save anything to the disk. Run a recovery program.

But there are cases when you want deleted files to be unrecoverable, for instance, confidential information that you have deleted. There are powerful freeware programs that you can get off the internet that can destroy files for good. They operate by overwriting the whole drive with random patterns of 0's and 1's. If you are considering donating your hard drive which contained information for your eyes only make sure you run such a program before you part with your disk. For if it falls into the hands of some evil, opportunist or mischievous person, you may wake up one morning with all your business in the street. Scary thought indeed! So remember it is never really gone until it is overwritten. Good or bad?