As I understand NTFS, once a file is deleted then removed from the recycle
bin it is not recoverable by ordinary means.
Therer may be utilities out there to do that, and certainly after a defrag
it will likely be gone. No problem there, but are files recoverable?

Problem is the other way around, here. I deleted a set of files, emptied
recycle bin, deleted more the next day and emptied again. Today the first
set of files were back in the folder that had been deleted from. Only
explanation I can think of is they there was a brief power outage that day,
so the system went down and restarted. I remember win98 and 95 used to do
these automatic registry restores periodically, but I didn't think that
deleted files and former folder contents were stored in the registry.

From a security point of view - does this mean that deleted files, with
recycle bin emptied, are not really deleted?

Thanks

Stuart