Queso Posted December 11, 2007 Report Share Posted December 11, 2007 I don't want this song anymore, I'm going to throw it in the recycle bin.My recycle bin is filled with 314 files, damn, might as well delete them all.**Erased** I have a question about space in a hard drive.When I delete a file, is it really deleted?What happens to the space on the hard drive? I don't get it. I'm looking at this the way you look at energy on Earth.It isn't destroyed...it's just....replaced. Can anyone offer any metaphors or insight on how deleting files relates to energy? Or are these two things totally independent from each other? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buffy Posted December 11, 2007 Report Share Posted December 11, 2007 Your question is actually quite interesting. "Erasing" is an existential quality! When you "Delete" a file, normally it will go into your "Waste Basket" or "Recycle Bin". At this point its still there exactly as it was before. It can be instantly resusitated no matter what you do, until.... When you "Empty" your Waste Basket, the space that is taken up by that file is freed up for reuse, but it's all still there, and if you're lucky, or are just careful and quick, the right program can reconstitute it quite easily, until.... Its overwritten by something else you create. But even then, as you've heard from stories about what the FBI and NSA can do, its still really there! That "1" on the disk, really is just "55% 1 and 45% whatever it used to be" and really smart programs can resuscitate it! Now the more you overwrite it, the harder it is to resuscitate, but at some harder and harder to retrieve level, its still there, until.... You take a sledgehammer to it, or as the government does, grind it into little tiny bits. But even then, its *still there*, its just about impossible to get to! Bottom line is that its really hard to really ERASE anything! You could have an aeroplane flying, if you bring your blue sky back, :)Buffy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 You can indeed Erase a file from your hard drive, there are quite a few utilities that will overwrite the physical space of that file with a random stream of bits, several times until the record is gone (at least 7 times) Now to the recovery of data (and this is something i have done in the past, once of a few hundred times). You don't have to have a very smart program to find deleted files after you "emptied you recycle bin". All that the FS does is deletes the record from its file table that points to the location of the file, a program that can read your disk and learn to recognize file headers for that particular file system, is a program that can recover your "deleted" data (there are a few out there, some work on windows, some are linux-based, most are for forensic data recovery) However yes, even if your data has been overwritten (once or twice), it can still be accessed by those who may really need it (FBI/CIA/NSA/DIA/MI6/NCIS/SVR/FSB/KGB/FSK/MSS/JIC/IB/ADIV/NIS/BRGE/INTERPOL.... and other intellignece and security agencies of the world), but not by your hard drive, the reading head isn't nearly sensitive enough for it, you really need some serious equipment, like a very precise gauss meter, together with some high end analytical software, generally not something that someone has at their home, more of something a big organization, a few of which are mentioned above, spends millions of tax payers dollars on... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jet2 Posted December 12, 2007 Report Share Posted December 12, 2007 Imagine if we are all individual file on the Earth system... Wow! Some 'files' are really difficult to rease!!!:( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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