Hard drive crashed and is now being recovered

[Htup234]

I had a hard drive crash in my computer today and it is being recovered by a tech guy I know right now. My concern is that I have a couple of files that I deleted about 5 years ago that I don't want coming back up. I understand what happens to a file after it is "deleted"- the space becomes "available" and may or may not be overwritten. My questions are: will these files have been overwritten by now? It was a basic hard drive on a computer that was used a few times a day for the past 5 years since the files were deleted. Next, when a crashed hard drive is recovered, do deleted items come up automatically, or are those files something that has to be looked for on purpose to recover? Thanks so much!

 

[CountMike]

No way to tell but pretty unlikely it has not been overwritten by now specially if did defrag it in the past. I also doubt technician would have time to check and look for all of them, I know I never do that.

 

[DR_Luke]

It depends on the skills of the technician. Most computer techs i encounter don't follow conventional data recovery procedures and may result in recovering deleted files.