a method for recycling intentionally , and or unintentionally deleted or overwritten document data within a system , wherein said document data is stored in a system filestore associated with a system database containing reference data pointing to the document data in the filestore , the method comprising the steps of determining that a delete and or overwrite command has been issued ; recording the reference data prior to and or after the deleting or updating of the reference data ; identifying and storing document data deleted to a separate empty filestore ; and recycling document data required by the user back to the system database and filestore , as necessary depending on user requirements manipulating the data , to provide the document in the required way and version requested by the user .