So like many people I had a hard time understanding how deleted Files could be recovered.
It sounds like a magic trick or breach of my Privacy to find all my data stored Online without me knowing it.
Recovering Deleted Files is possible because when you Delete a File you are NOT actually deleting the file at all.
What ?
Not Deleting the File ?
What is this guy talking about ?
It says ‘DELETE’ right on my screen !!!
We are both right.
Your computer does ask if you want to Delete the File.
However it is not the file which is being deleted.
It is Internal Address of where that file is stored at within a Memory card or Hard Drive.
What makes Recovering Deleted Files Easy
Some factors make recovering deleted files easy, while other things make it oh so complicated.
Lets say you deleted a file and immediately realized what you did and want to recover it.
This is ideal.
When you deleted the file your device, no matter what it is, considered the location of that data in memory now usable again.
IYour device has not had time to store anything else in that location.
This means your data is completely intact.
Its still deleted b/c you erased the pointer telling your device where its at.
Recover your data now and its almost 100% sucessful.
How Data is Stored
1. When you store a Picture on a Memory Card your computer stores this as 1’s and 0’s or what is called binary code.
As you can imagine a color Picture takes a lot of room to store so there are a ton of 1’s and 0’s.
2. Your computer then creates an Address Book allows it to find all the files you want them.
In addition it uses this address book to report back to you what it has stored.
By doing it this way the computer doesn’t have to actually load the picture to remember its a large picture file.
This makes the computer run much quicker.
3. When you load the picture your computer then takes 2-3 seconds to find and load it, but this is the only time it uses the file itself.
It simply uses the Address Book to keep track of what sections of the memory card or hard drive are ‘used’.
4. When you ‘DELETE’ an item like a picture your computer simply removed the Address Book entry.
This leaves the actual file where it was.
Deleting the address book means your file will remain intact.
Once the computer reuses that memory space with new data then the files and programs will truly be gone.
It will do this randomly as you save new files and pictures.
This means that the sooner you attempt data recovery techniques the better your chances of success will be.
Encrypted Data
Recovering files that have been encrypted is tricky.
If its simply pictures then its simplified but other files can be far more challenging.
Recovering encrypted data is harder to do yourself.
The more sophisticated the Encryption the harder it is to recover.
Why is this true ?
Well when you think about it the purpose of Encryption is to protect the data.
The stronger the encryption the hard it is the break.
The safer your Data.
This means when recovering the data its far more complicated.
Privacy and deleted Files
Now you see how data you thought was deleted can be recovered.
You also see how much more concerned about your private information being recovered and used by criminals could be possible.
It is highly recommended that you always fully destroy all discarded hard drives.
These drivesvmay have kept private information even if you delete the data.
In todays’ high tech world we have access to more powerful computers every year.
It is so prevalent that we have become jaded to the privacy dangers that we face every day.
We have more and more devices and computers.
These devices have become more and more inter-connected in an effort to make our lives easy.
Cell Phone Data Safety
Items like cell phones have become more powerful than desktop computers of the 20th century.
The are more connected to all other devices in our lives and both communicate with all those devices and share the same information and personal data.
This means that when you get a new cell phone we really need to treat the old device the same as we did with the old desktops.
contain out personal information and data, and we must protect that.
The phones do not have ‘hard drives’ as such but that doesn’t mean they don’t keep the same data, its just on a different memory platform.
Even a factory ‘rest’ is not going to truely remove all your data, it is better to go thru your devices and manually remove all of the most sensitive information yourself.
Once you are happy with the data left on your device we still recommend you have the device professionally scrubbed or at the very least disposed of by a secure company much as sensitive documents are properly shredded and disposed.
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