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Recovering Deleted Files ?


rubbish heap

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all right, so i got in trouble with the law a little while back and made the decision to delete all of my flicks because i was sure they'd come to my house and see my shit on the computer.

 

but nothing happened.

 

so i've heard for awhile that when you delete a file and empty the recycle bin in windows, you aren't actually getting rid of it. my question is, how do i recover lost files? is there any program i can use, and if so what do you recommend?

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btw. cops also use undelete software (at least here in germany), so deleting the files ain't enough, you need an app like "eraser" which will overwrite the files with random bits and bites several times to make sure that nobody can retrieve them.

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Okay let me explain this to you.

 

A harddrive is like a book. The filenames/directory structure are like the index and the chapters/write are the actual binary data of the files. 0 and 1's.

 

When you delete a file all it does it removes that reference in the index. The file is still fully intact. Even when you fully delete from recycle bin.

 

The only way for a file to be truely delete or corrupted is for NEW data to overwrite these chapters... Which happens, as the index reference was erased so the operating system sees it as empty. So the question to ask... how much have you used this hard drive since the deletion? Lots of new software, new flicks?

 

The government standard is actually a full wipe of the 'index' and overwriting it with empty contents... 17 times. So if poor terrorist FULLY wipes his data 16 times there is a chance they can get some of it back. From what I've been told by a prof who has worked with the Canadian military in computer forensic investigations is that they even go so far as to look at badly damaged harddrives under a fucking microscope to read contents of clusters and whatnot. Interesting stuff.

 

But yeah. There are lots of commercial products out for for undeletion and google is probably cluttered with them. So try a search on download.com for undeletion or undelete. Only free/shareware stuff there. WinHex.com I know does undeletion, and undeletion of a wildcard. ie *.jpg.

 

non-hetero the computer forensics student.

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