How to Permanently Delete Videos So That They Can't Be Recovered?

Quick Navigation:

• Note: Deleted Videos Are Recoverable
• Overwriting: The Best Bet on Your Privacy
• Software for Permanently Erasing Videos
• How to Permanently Delete Videos with DoYourData Super Eraser?
• Conclusion
• FAQs About Permanently Delete Videos

"I am going to send my household computer to be repaired. However, I have once stored hundreds of very private videos on the hard drive. These videos mustn't be seen by other people because they are very private. I want to permanently shred these videos before sending the computer to local computer repair store. How to do that? I don't want to other people recover the deleted videos by data recovery software or any method. In a word, I want to permanently destroy these videos so that they can't be recovered anymore." – Kanic

If you are concerned about permanently deleting your personal videos, video recordings or movies, then you are not alone. Almost everyone who has content stored on their PC shares this same concern as some videos can be of great importance to them.

Losing one of your personal videos can cause chaos and can pose you at great risk. People stay worried even after deleting the videos with the Shift + Delete combo as some recovery software have the capability to reverse the process of deletion even if the user thinks that it is gone for good.

In this article, we will discuss how to permanently delete videos on PC as the conventional methods are not deemed secure anymore. Before we start our main discussion, we will study the risks associated with deleting videos from PC using old methods, and then we will take a brief look at the possible solutions to this problem.

Note: Deleted Videos Are Recoverable

If you are a PC user, then you must be well-familiar with different methods to delete video files on your PC. One way is to move your files to Recycle Bin and afterward, empty it. Furthermore, you can also shorten this step by using the Shift + Delete button on a selected video file and hitting Enter to permanently delete it.

With these procedures, the video may seem to have disappeared completely from your PC but not many people are aware that this method only hides the video paths. The videos can be accessed again using good recovery software. Therefore, it poses a great hazard to the privacy of an individual.

Why do videos remain accessible even after you have totally cleared them from PC? Here's the reason. When you delete a video file, the space that it once occupied appears to be free. But, behind the scenes, this space is still engaged by the same video file unless you decide to paste some other file in its place. In simple terms, you will have to overwrite the previous video file to permanently delete it.

Overwriting: The Best Bet on Your Privacy

If you don't want the deleted videos to be recovered in any way, it's better to totally wipe or destroy the data on the drive space of the deleted videos. Mostly, a good way to wipe the removed data is overwriting the space with new or meaningless data.

You can manually overwrite the space that you want to be permanently cleaned. Let us say that Drive A had your personal video files that you deleted for privacy concerns. To make this deletion irreversible, you should copy and paste some other unimportant files in (now apparent) to Drive A. To ensure all the deleted videos are overwritten completely, you can paste enough files to make sure the free space of the drive is all occupied. After that, you can remove these unimportant files.

This way your video files should stay deleted and lost for good. Even if someone tries to access the videos after using some recovery software, it will be in vain.

While this process can be executed manually, however, it can take a bit of time from your busy schedule. Conversely, you can use some third-party software to perform this process to permanently delete your video files and possibly, save yourself some extra time.

Software for Permanently Erasing Videos

Data erasure software allows you to easily shred or erase videos automatically, without manual effort. You can set the software to wipe the data and let it run in the background, freeing you to focus on other tasks. Once complete, the videos are permanently erased and cannot be recovered. There are some applications that offer the data wiping feature which can be used to wipe videos. Let us now look at a couple of software that can answer the query which is how to permanently delete videos on PC.

File Shredder

As the name suggests, this software promises to shred user files i.e., video files, and make them permanently deleted so that they cannot be accessed later. It rewrites the files with a "random series of binary data multiple times". And this process is called Shredding. The product says that this way the possibility of recovering a file is “mostly theoretical”.

Some highlights of this product are given below:

• Claims to be a fast and safe tool to permanently delete user files
• Free to download and can be used without any restrictions
• Has 5 different shredding algorithms, each stronger than the previous one
• Very small downloadable size
• The website is trusted by ScamAdvisor.com

DoYourData Super Eraser

This is one of the best data erasure software. It supports to securely and permanently erase videos, photos or documents from any type of hard drive or storage device. Once your videos are erased by Super Eraser, the videos are lost forever, can't be recovered by any data recovery method. Download it here:

How to Permanently Delete Videos with DoYourData Super Eraser?

Super Eraser is a powerful data erasing application. It will permanently shred, destroy and wipe the selected files from hard drive or storage media without any chance of data recovery. Why it can permanently deleted video files? Cause it will shred and wipe the selected video files and overwrite the disk space of deleted videos to make data recovery impossible. It can destroy and permanently delete videos from PC/Mac, hard drive, USB flash drive, digital camera, digital camcorder, memory card, etc. It offers three convenient options to permanently wipe video files or other files.

Option 1: Permanently shred and delete video files.

In order to delete some private videos and make data recovery impossible, you should permanently erase these videos. This option allows you to selectively shred and wipe videos on your hard drive or storage media. It is very useful when you only want to erase several videos.

Option 2: Wipe entire partition to destroy all videos files.

If you have stored all your videos in a partition or device, this mode can help you wipe the entire hard drive partition to destroy all videos. Please note that this option will permanently wipe all the existing and deleted/lost data on the selected hard drive partition or device.

Option 3: Wipe unused disk space to destroy deleted/lost videos.

If the videos have been deleted or formatted by you, you can use this option to wipe the unused disk space to permanently erase the deleted/lost videos on the hard drive partition so that other people can't recover your deleted or lost videos any more.

The videos that contain sensitive information should be permanently deleted before you resell, donate or give away your old computer/device. You do not want to your videos fall into wrong hands. So just download and install Super Eraser and run it to permanently shred/delete videos from your hard drive or storage media under Windows and Mac. It will permanently destroy the videos that you don't want to other people see. It also supports to permanently delete other files like photos, emails, documents, archives, audio, etc.

Conclusion

Even if you delete videos with Shift + Del combo or after emptying the recycle bin, the videos can still be recovered. If you want to remove some private videos permanently, it's essential to get a data erasure tool to accomplish the task and ensure the data will be unrecoverable forever. So, this was a brief look at a hot topic addressing how to permanently delete videos on PC. We hope that our readers will be able to securely remove their personal videos after reading this article.

FAQs About Permanently Delete Videos

1. Why the deleted videos can be recovered?

When you delete videos, the files are not wiped. Instead, the system removes the file reference and marks the space as available for reuse. Until that space is overwritten with new data, the deleted videos can still be recovered using recovery software.

2. How to recover deleted videos?

To recover the deleted videos, use the reliable data recovery software Do Your Data Recovery with only a few steps:

• Download the software and install it on your computer.
• Run it and choose the drive from where you deleted videos.
• Click the Scan button to search for the deleted videos.
• After the scan is done, choose the found videos and recover to another drive.

3. What’s the difference between deleting and erasing videos?

Deleting videos only removes the file reference, making them invisible but still recoverable with data recovery software. Permanent erasure uses advanced methods to overwrite the data, ensuring it cannot be retrieved

4. How to remove videos from computer permanently?

Remove videos with professional data erasure software, like DoYourData Super Eraser, can permanently wipe the files and make the data unrecoverable. How's how to permanently remove videos with the software:

• Run the software and change to Erase Files/Folders mode.
• Add the videos which you want to permanently remove.
• Click the Erase Now button to shred the videos completely beyond recovery.

If you have removed the videos, you can also use Wipe Free Space to wipe the deleted videos. What's more, if you want to erase the videos along all files on a drive, choose the mode Wipe Hard Drive.