Erasing files..

[ecntrc]

A client wants to know if files were deleted in her comp, like dragged into trash can and trash can was emptied can it be recovered again?

[tamlin]

Technically, yes they can. However, it depends very much on how much the computer has been used since the files were deleted. This is because when you "delete" a file in the normal way, it isn't actually wiped from the disk. What happens is that the operating system hides that particular file and marks the area it occupies on the disk as available for writing. As long as there has been little or no data written to the disk since the files were deleted (and the disk has not been defragged) you will have a good chance of recovering them with one of the Undelete utilities that are available online.

Here's two free ones:
Free Undelete Utility Recovers Deleted Files, Unerases Lost Data
Freeware file recovery software to undelete files or recover lost files

and here's a fully-functioning trial version of a commercial product:
Undelete File Recovery – Recover Delete Files

[unleash]

Tamlin is right, it can in most of the times be recovered!!

And tamlin's list is pretty big but i got an add for the list here,
Tune up utititels.TuneUp Software Nederland - Downloaden

It's in dutch so.....but the data recovery works fine for me

[tamlin]

I should just point out that I haven't actually tried out any of the utilities that I listed in my last post, so I don't know how effective they are. As unleash says, there are others as well - those were just the first 3 I found after a quick search on You-Know-Where.

[ecntrc]

sounds good. i think my client just wanted to know if the files were able to be recovered. but ill pass those links on to her. when she first asked me i was like well i am pretty sure you can. even though its deleted from the trash can youd have to find a professional to get them for you. but i did not know that the more and more you use the computer it will be eventually erased. thank you guys.

[tamlin]

If your client was looking at it from the other point of view (i.e. worried that sensitive files that she thought she'd deleted could be recovered by someone else), then there are also software utilities that will remove deleted files completely so that they can't be recovered. They usually work by overwriting the "deleted" files several times with garbage, making them totally unrecoverable. You can find these utilities on the web, too.