How Unsecure is "Empty Trash" Compared to "Secure Empty Trash?"

[HappyDude20]

I moved a bunch of files to the trash can after installing Snow Leopard, mainly backup files from OmniFocus.

I clicked Secure Empty Trash and over 500,000 items began deleting. These 500,000+ items deleted at the rate of 2-3 items a second. This would total 138 hours equaling over 5 days to Secure Empty the trash.

This is just ridiculous in my option so I just did the "Empty Trash" feature, showing me only 350 items, which deleted quickly in under 5 minutes...

So far I know with Secure Empty Trash that the trash is securely layered with 0's & 1's....but wonder what happens with just "Empty Trash?"

How easily accessible is it for someone to retrieve something that i've deleted?

[J the Ninja]

Impossible for the average person, but someone who knows what they are doing could get it back in no time at all. Deleted data will get corrupted and erased over time as things get written over it, but right away it's pretty easy to get back.

[bethri]

Originally Posted by HappyDude20

How easily accessible is it for someone to retrieve something that i've deleted?

Not to mention that they'd need physical access to your machine's drive for long enough to run a proper file recovery tool.

Is this a likely occurrence? Do you leave your machine logged in and unattended for days at a time?

There's almost no reason to ever Secure Empty Trash.

[HappyDude20]

Originally Posted by bethri

Not to mention that they'd need physical access to your machine's drive for long enough to run a proper file recovery tool.

Is this a likely occurrence? Do you leave your machine logged in and unattended for days at a time?

There's almost no reason to ever Secure Empty Trash.

Guess you're right. Figured i'd ask.

My main concern was that I usually take my macbook with me everywhere and this mainly includes to my friends house or random kickbacks where people always like to go through my itunes and browse the web, I know they wont do it, since they probably dont know much about computers but you never know. That and I asked this time around cause i was deleting a video file of my (ex) Gf & I...you know.