How can I permanently delete documents from my hard drive?

Bad news: I’m afraid this just isn’t possible. If you delete something in the normal way, only the reference to that content in the table of contents is deleted. The information itself stays where it is, until it is overwritten sooner or later. There is software that can just recover the erased information!

There is really only one way to erase a hard drive, and that is to reformat it. But then everything that is on it, including the ‘operating system’, is gone… Incidentally, you sometimes read that even formatting is not enough: the manufacturer could still repair certain things.

Kind regards