Brief history: I live in a school dorm, with "free" internet access, obviously everyone takes advantage of downloading music off the net, and so on... the server, sees this, or notices this I guess, and in turn informs the school. So there is a really high possibility authorities of some kind will come and check the computers for illegally downloaded mp3's, avi's, etc. Now since its one connection for the whole school they have to check each computer manually... right?

My computer, which is ancient, has two hard drives, conveniently I store all my mp3's on the second, they fill up the whole hard disc �cause it�s so small. So what I've done in preparation is taken this drive out. SO my computer looks clean... to me. But not knowing anything about computers...

...is their anything I'm missing? I had Kazaa on my first hard disc, is their some cache or log they can pull up to see files I've downloaded, or such things that could cause me much trouble. I�ve had mp3�s there before. Loose ends I guess...

Also: how would they go about searching a computer for such evidence? There are many more computers to check than mine.

Last question: when you do a search with the windows search option, you type in a word, and the tool sort of logs that word so that if you type in the beginning of that word later it will suggest what word you're going for... how do I delete this history of my searches?

In any case, much gratitude...

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I know that a professional info recoverer says he can pull info from a drive, even if it has been written over 7 times. On the other hand, consider that probably everyone in the college and in america is doing exactly what you are, to some degree. They cant afford to look for mp3s on all the computers, and they cant afford to lose 95% of their students because of such a search. It just isnt feasable or the college. I dont thing the server traks what you download exactly, just that you are using bandwith. No doubt the techs that run the network know how many mp3s and such are downloaded because they see all the bandwidth going into and out of the dorms, they know that EVERYONE is downloading, nd so are they, so in short, dont worry.

Never going to happen. Unless you've signed something agreeing to have your computer search, they don't have the probable cause for a schoolwide computer search. If they did, you could sue the shit out of the school and the feds, get enough money to retire, and axe everyone who had anything to do with the search out of a job.

I, umm, don't live in America.

But it's similar.

More worried of detection through the server, which is what they will have to do.

Right, and recently in Copenhagen a boarding school similar in design to my own, was forced to share a hefty fine because of the discovery of a store of such things on their students server. But it was on their server, which we are not able to save things too. I'd find you the article, but it would be in danish.

Thanks though...

Also look at it this way.

Lets assume that they know you have downloaded mp3s, and lets assume they are searching your computer. If you have pulled out the hard drive, you can say that you have deleted the mp3s because you realized that it was wrong or some shit like that. And since you don't have the mp3s on your computer they have to assume that you did indeed delete them.