moving or deleting a file

In the old days, (DOS) we were told that if you delete/erase a file, that there is software that can look at your hard drive and by changing the first letter (normally it was a ? mark plus the balance of the file name) they could bring it back and read it. My question is: If I moved a financial report from Word or some other program to a USB card, is it still on my hard drive like the ?.
Thanks