James888

Your post reminds me of a friend of mine, he was always worrying about something no matter how inconsequential and it subsequently turned out that he was suffering from a mild case of depression.

Not that you could be but being worried about something that you accidentally downloaded is a waste of time because most laws require intent and this was an accident. And, if you did not know this, pornography is legal in most western countries.

However, let me offer some technical reassurance, when something is recorded on a hard disk it is recorded magnetically and not permanently burned in like a CD/R disk. So when file is deleted windows removes the index to that file, like removing an index reference in a book, and the space that the file occupies is marked as an area that can be reused. So, eventually that area will be overwritten the more you use your PC. The deleted file, up until it is overwritten, is only recoverable if you stop using your computer and only then with special recovery utilities. Therefore, dependant on PC usage, the file will eventually become unrecoverable (the more you use your PC the less time it will take before the file becomes unrecoverable).

Now that you know this you can rest easy.



UK Bob