Be careful what you put on your hard drive! - Saxperience

chrissawyer21 · 6th March 2009, 22:26

i do A-level computing and discovered today that information that is deleted can be retreived!

my computing teacher said he used an old hard drive and booting a program using a floppy disk showing all information that been deleted and left on!

How it works
The drive stores the information each bit of informaiton has links to the next peice of information as the hard drive is scrambled in bits and nothing is stored in order (hence why you have to defrag the hard drive).

Each bit of information is linked and has a lookup, when something is deleted the only thing that is deleted is the lookup, so the information is still there can be retreived.

So what am i saying?
If you have ever put personal information on your hard drive (such as banking information) you shouldnt give away or sell your hard drive. Do not even smash it as people can still get information. The only way is to melt the hard drive to prevent people getting hold of your private and personal information

Luke · 6th March 2009, 22:31

Heard this on the radio few weeks ago.

Another thing is to drill thru' the hard drive too.

Mochachino · 6th March 2009, 22:35

i smashed mine up with hammer n chizle, surely that would prevent poeple from getting any info?

Ryan^p · 6th March 2009, 22:38

A friend works in data recovery.

its well known that you never permanaently remove stuff.

You just put a nail through it is usually the best way, as even burned ones can sometimes be recovered

stevie_m · 6th March 2009, 22:54

big magnet ! thats wat gary glitter shud have done

Liam_ · 6th March 2009, 23:02

You can get software which will write random 1's and 0's to the disc. You'll need to perform it multiple times to ensure the old data is unreadable though.

If you really want rid of the drive, take it to some sort of data recovery firm and they will put it through an industrial shredder type machine.

Prickle^p · 6th March 2009, 23:32

I got told about that in my IT lesson a few weeks back, a way you could do it is open it and damage the disk, or the ways you's suggest lol

jus_tin · 6th March 2009, 23:52

data can always be recovered, theres some free (limited) and third party software that can retrieve data thats been deleted and also deleted out of recycle bin. old news tbh. windows is just your interface, whats behind it is where its at... just coz you cant see it, doesnt mean its there. ethical hacking ftw!

Mark51^p · 7th March 2009, 00:07

surely this stuff that if been held on your hard drive is taking up space and using resorces that your computer could use on something else? is there no software that can remove these lookup files?

chrissawyer21 · 7th March 2009, 09:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark51

surely this stuff that if been held on your hard drive is taking up space and using resorces that your computer could use on something else? is there no software that can remove these lookup files?

it removes the lookup, hence why it cant find them. But the peices that it looks up are still there, and when a program it just hooks the lookup to the data. So providing the data isnt corrupt you will be able to gain access to it even it has been deleted for 10 years.

PSPDan · 7th March 2009, 09:21

Isn't this how they catch pedophiles and stuff?

stevie_m · 7th March 2009, 09:36

and steal personal information aswell

Stickyjam · 7th March 2009, 09:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark51

surely this stuff that if been held on your hard drive is taking up space and using resorces that your computer could use on something else? is there no software that can remove these lookup files?

if it has no lookup eventually when the hard drive neared capacity it would be written over...

its a well known fact about this and aswell as shareware/freeware programs to recover data there is equally as mentioned above programs that fill the hard drive with useless/nonsense data till its full... do that 8-10 times and you wont be getting any data back...

Alex^p · 7th March 2009, 11:25

I was working on a program that intercepts delete actions on the hard drive and would overwrite the file multiple times before removing the link.
Maybe i should revive it with all this paranoia

Byard · 9th March 2009, 14:42

Thought this was a well known fact already

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeeumH

You can get software which will write random 1's and 0's to the disc. You'll need to perform it multiple times to ensure the old data is unreadable though.

Correct.

betty02 · 9th March 2009, 14:57

No offense but your doing A-level ICT and you;ve only just found that out?

Been well know for so many years now!