I have been asked many times to retrieve data from customers’ hard drives. No matter if they deleted the file by accident, misplaced the file, or their hard drive became formatted; people lose data. It’s surprising how many people actually lose data.
If you haven’t guessed, this week’s article is about data loss. Most of the time loss could be prevented and was caused by human error. In fact, I would say that most computer issues are caused by human error. Let’s get back on track and continue along with data loss.
A common story I hear all the time is “my pictures from a family event were accidentally deleted.” Maybe your son or daughter deleted them. The point is that someone deleted them and it wasn’t a technical issue caused by faulty hardware.
When data is deleted from your hard drive it’s not really deleted. Some of the time data is left if the recycler until someone moves it from there. If the data is still in the recycle bin it can be moved from there by right clicking the file and then clicking “restore”. The data is put back to its original location.
When the bin is emptied, data is moved from there to the never-regions of your hard drive. It’s permanently deleted, right? Really what happens when you delete a file is something called the header gets destroyed. The header is only what the directory uses to organize your computer. The data is left intact until the space is needed for other files.
Most people have a larger hard drive than they actually need; because of this most people only use a fraction of their total hard drive capacity. The unused portion is just that: ‘unused space.’ The truth is the space appears blank within Windows because Windows has no use for it anymore.
Most of time this space holds data from files hidden below the surface of Windows. By taking away the header and relieving Windows from holding that space in reserve, those files are really there but in queue to be written over. In other words, the files are still there.
An accumulation of junk located in empty space really isn’t junk at all. Technically, according to Windows anyways, that space is free space and is available for new files to be written over. Really though there could be data that you thought was deleted hiding out. So if files are lost there are ways of retrieving them within a reasonable amount of time.
Now let’s say you find out they’re missing a few weeks after it happened. Depending on the files written to the hard drive after they were deleted, the files can sometimes be resurrected. However, if Windows requires that space then there’s a good chance of the files being written over and permanently lost. If parts of the file are overwritten then a portion of the file may still exist.
What happens if I deleted some pictures and want them permanently erased? There are utilities that will erase a hard drive permanently. As well, there are utilities that will erase the blank space on hard drives permanently. The Department of Defense compiled a technique of repeatedly formatting drives that makes data on the drive irretrievable.
CCleaner is a great utility for users to wipe their own free space clean of any trace of data. There is a function within the standard software that overwrites the free space to DOD specifications. On the other hand, reformatting an entire drive is next to impossible without specialized equipment. it can be done.
Remember, if you deleted files you don’t want anyone else to see, it’s a good idea to cleanse your free space with CCleaner or another similar piece of software. Private data should be private.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him at (978) 413-2840 or call him directly at (978) 919-8059.)