Older Cache Files Automatically Deleted
Question: When you download from a Web site, isn’t it correct that the data constituting that file gets put onto your hard disk? So when you are finished with the downloaded file and you close it, what happens to it? Does your system take care of automatically deleting it in order to free the space on your hard disk or is it necessary for you to do the deleting? If deletion is your responsibility, how do you show all the undeleted download files? Finally, how do you go about deleting them?
Answer: It’s true that many files are copied onto your hard drive when you visit a Web site, a process known as caching. Web pages are made up of discrete chunks of material, such as pictures and text, contained in separate files. Storing such things as large picture files on your hard drive can speed up your progression through a Web site because those images won’t have to be downloaded over and over.
The downloaded data--usually images in the gif or jpeg formats--are stored in your Web browsing software’s cache file. The browsing software has a set amount of space set aside for cache files and deletes older files as the space fills up.
To get to the cache file in recent versions of the Internet Explorer Web browser, go to the Tools menu and click on Internet Options. In the middle of the box that opens is a line labeled “Temporary Internet Files” with two buttons.
The button on the left, labeled “Delete Files,” will wipe out everything in the cache file immediately. There’s no real need to do this unless you’re worried about somebody seeing items in your cache file before they’re eventually automatically deleted.
If the material is particularly sensitive, remember that data simply deleted from a computer’s hard drive can still be recovered with forensic software tools unless the drive is carefully “scrubbed” using special computer programs.
Hitting the button on the right, labeled “Settings,” will let you tinker with the standard cache settings. For instance, you can reduce or increase the amount of data that can fit in the cache. And if you’d like to see what’s in the cache file at the moment, just hit the View Files button.
*
Dave Wilson is The Times’ personal technology columnist. He can be reached at dave.wilson@latimes.com. Send Tech Q&A; questions to techtimes@latimes.com.
