William Craig, I have the same problem on Windows 10 desktop. It wasn't a problem on my Windows 11 laptop.

Laurie, you miss the point. It does not just delete the file/folder/etc without putting it in the trash can, it also OVERWRITES that area on your disk, MULTIPLE times, with securely created 1's, 0's, and random patterns making it impossible to recover. Files deleted, even not in your trashcan, CAN be recovered if the recovery is done immediately and partially recovered if there has not been much disk action (so as to reuse the disk area previously occupied by the deleted file. From their web page: "Government & military erasure standards including DoD 5220.22-M, Peter Gutmann's algorithm, etc."

Laurie, it will not permanently delete your dara,, your data is always available in your device sectors... which is recoverable after deleteing...

Laurie, though Windows warns you that pressing shift+delete will permanently delete your file, actually the file is not deleted. Windows just removes the filename from the Folder listing and marks the areas that the file occupies, as "free".

Later, when you (or Windows) saves files, depending on the free space available and other factors, it may use some of these so-called "free" locations.

So, since the file contents are not actually deleted, it is possible to get back or recover a deleted file using special undelete programs or file retrieval tools.

Programs like today's DoYourData Super Eraser overwrite these locations with random data, thus making it impossible to recover your file contents.

This is usually not important for us normal users unless you work with super confidential information that "should not get into the wrong hands".

Laurie, Laurie, When you delete files through keyboard shortcuts, the entire “Recycle Bin” step is skipped. But until the space your file was occupying is actually overwritten, the data can be recovered.

To permanently get rid of the file, you need a secure delete tool to shred the file or overwrite the space.

In practical terms, though, doing the will work for most situations, since unless someone suspects that you deleted something, they won't be looking for it if it's not visible in a file manager.

What the current free software offered here does is put a nice wrapper on a utility to overwrite the space that the file took up on the hard drive or SSD. There are some free utilities that do the same thing, but this has a nice GUI and also is free with a lifetime license (no updates, but I doubt you'd need an update for something like this)

Laurie,
Hmmm. never heard that before. Is this a Mac thing ?

Laurie, the process you describe doesn't just throw the deleted file into the trash, the data still remains on the media and can be recovered as long as it isn't overwritten by something.

Laurie, that just deletes the files and they can be recovered with the right program until overwritten with data. To permenently erase the files they must be over-written preferably several times like the program offered today does.

Laurie,
Not quite. Holding the shift key down while pressing delete simply BYPASSES the data being sent to the Recycle Bin and "tells" the system that the area being used to store that data can now be used to store other data. The original data can still be recovered using recovery software until it has been overwritten by new data.

Laurie, shift and delete does not remove anything and those files can easily be recovered, they are just marked on the disc as deleted without being deleted. In order to fully delete an item that sate needs to be overwritten multiple times with random data to prevent recovery

Paul Whiteley, Eric, mariposaman, TK and others that say the data is not deleted, I believe you are talking about the hard drives that run on spinning platters and not the SSD, because there is a huge difference of how the files are deleted and or recovered. Spinning disk write the data in sectors and segments, while SSD writes them in 3D mode (vertical and horizontal rows). Second, Spinning disk HD write the data in a daisy chain mode (the previous sectors points to the next sector and so on), but SSD uses address data of the location of the next part of the file, therefore SSD drive needs only erase the address locations and that is all. If the data address location is gone, there is no possible recovery of any data. No need to destroy you SSD by writing endless 0 and 1s on the same cell in the SSD.

TK, While I agree 35 times is overkill & really only necessary for older magnetic drives, as a photographer I have been grateful in the past for not using this type of software.....I have recovered tens of gigabytes of image files from older style HD drives that I thought I had cleared by deletion using recovery software......

I have also managed to recover deleted files from SD cards & CF cards before so simple deletion does not prevent recovery even on modern media......I have also managed to recover data from quick formatted cards

With older drives I still go with the destroy the drive to destroy the data philosophy & do not recycle, donate or gift devices unless the HDD has been replaced first with a clean OS install