Does my recycle bin completely remove the stuff I delete?

So yeah, basically I'm hopefully off to university September this year and so need more memory on my laptop. I'm planning on deleting pretty much all of the photos and videos that I have on my laptop, as there's tonnes and it just takes up so much space, and there's a lot of gopro footage from biking which uses a lot of memory!

I'm not really fussed about moving them on to CD so I have them still, but basically, if I delete it to the recycle bin on my laptop, then empty the recycle bin, does it get the stuff completely off my laptop?

My parents have said I may as well get a new laptop for my birthday, but I want stuff for biking, so instead I want to just delete a lot of the stuff.

I've heard mixed thing, some people say that it does delete a lot of the stuff completely, but I'm pretty sure it still stays on the hard drive?

If so, how can i delete this stuff as there's chuffing loads! :/

Thanks! (Sorry the post was so big!)

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