Re: what happens to deleted files

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The files are still there...but simply marked as free space...so could
be
recovered.

If you want to make them essentially un-recoverable there are plenty of
third party "wipe" utilites that will shred them to the point where
they'd
only be recoverable
with expensive and time consuming lab work.

That "...[they] can only be recoverable with expensive and time
consuming lab work" can officially be classified in the "Urban Myths"
category. Nobody has ever been able to recover overwriten files, not
even Dr. Gutmann himself, he has told me so in an email conversation. I
challenge anyone reading these groups to offer concrete proof that they
can recover zero written/wiped files or to give us the names of data
recovery firms who can do it.

John


I've done some experiments and have tried *numerous* undelete utilities on
drives that had been deleted, formatted and reloaded
and have *NEVER EVER* found any remnants of previous files.

So there is no practical way of retrieving them...

HOWEVER if one had access to a lab with an electron microscope... in
theory...old data could be recovered...

but it would take tens of thousands of dollars worth of lab time (probably
more actually)
and possibly weeks or months of work.

So I'd imagine that most any "wipe" software would be plenty good...
as I have never heard of anyone actually retrieving wiped data either.


.

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