At 11:10 PM 12/13/98 +0000, Ahmad wrote in answer to someone:
>>> Third, and provided you have deleted the former 2 folders,
>>>they will
>>>take your hard drive to have all deleted data recovered. In windows, when
you
>>>delete
>>>something, it does not actually go away completely. It's still there!
>
>>only until it is overwritten surely?
>
>Nop. Even if it is formatted, data can still be recovered!
>
Both are right, surely. 'Deleted' data may or may not be overwritten by future
writes, depending on how much of the disk is free and on other OS factors
beyond my ken. Normal reformatting, which is merely erasure of the FATs and ?
root directory of the HD certainly leaves recoverable data littered all over
it. Security requires also running a program such as 'WipeDisk' (used to be
available in Norton utilities) which writes zeroes all over the disk so there
is no information left on it at all. (WipeFile does same for a particular
file,
but I wonder if it erases temporary files related to its production (see
below)).
One trace some people don't realise they are leaving is when Word (and maybe
other WP programs) is used to draft something and the file saved to floppy. A
naive employee intent on doing a bit of shafting thought that provided he did
this and took away the floppies no one would know what he had been up to in
company time, not realising that Word saves temporary workfiles to the HD all
the time, regardless of where the final version of the file is saved, and much
of his activities was readable on the HD in fragments here and there.
Now for the real techies to correct us all :-}
Senior Lurker
>
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