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Q: Last month, my son, while trying to fix a minor computer gliche, clicked on PC Recovery, rather than System Restore.  This effectively reset my computer back to factory settings and ultimately wiped out all of my emails.  I have spoken to Cox, HP, and Microsoft reps, all of whom tell me the data is gone forever.  I have always heard that nothing is really gone; it’s just lost somewhere in cyber space.  Does that not apply here, or is it really gone?  There were a lot of very important emails in that group.  BTW, in case you’re wondering, I have a better back-up plan in place now…live and learn.

– Barbara H.
Crestview, FL

A: Whether or not something is truly “gone” is often a matter of opinion.  It’s not quite correct to say that “nothing is ever really gone” from a computer, but it is quite a bit harder to make something totally unrecoverable than most people realize.  It’s a matter of perspective: You lost your e-mails, and a bunch of technicians who have no real interest in helping you get them back have told you it’s an impossible task.  If your computer was a piece of evidence in a high-profile criminal investigation, you can bet that a forensic PC technician would have a different opinion.  The major difference?  Cost.  While the data can perhaps be recovered, it is probably a cost-prohibitive operation, and is certainly a task far outside the skills of the typical home computer user.  Better luck with your new backup plan!

Q: I have a 74.59 gig hard drive and only 239 MB of free space left.  I have gone to control panel and “add and remove programs” and totaled all of the programs entered there and it only came up to 1.904 Gigs.  Where is all the rest being used?  That is a lot of Gigs somewhere.

– Don S.
Niceville, FL

A: Your hard drive is your computer’s sole repository for long-term data storage when you turn off the power.  Every last little bit of information that it requires to do its job gets stored on the hard drive, and everything you download or install uses up more hard disk space.  With your drive down to less than a quarter-gig free, you might want to look into an upgrade.

All that aside, you asked where all your gigs went.  Well, one place is Windows itself.  I’m on a WinXP machine right now, and its Windows directory is over 7.5 gigs in size.  If yours is similar, that’s 10% of your disk’s capacity right there.  Then there’s Windows “Virtual Memory” which is a dedicated block of disk space set aside so the operating system can use more memory than is physically installed in the machine.  The swap file that supplies the virtual memory function can be multiple gigabytes in size.  There is also the system’s Internet cache.  IE retains copies of web pages and graphic images you’ve previously viewed so they will load faster the next time you visit the site.  You can see how much space is being used by running IE, and clicking on Tools->Internet Options.  On the “General” tab, look for “Browsing History” and click “Settings”.  Around the middle of the dialog there is an entry that says “Disk space to use” and it shows the cache size.  Everything I’ve mentioned so far is space used by the operating system, but you are likely using space too.  Do you store digital pictures, movies, or audio files on your hard drive?  They all use space, but especially the movies.  Even a short, 30-second clip can use up several megabytes of space.