So i was enjoying some down time for myself the other night taking a nice warm bath and letting my mind wander when i suddenly recalled a time when i worked at a research station and some idiot managed to somehow delete over 3000 excel spreadsheets worth of recently collected data. I was charged with recovering the data and scanning through everything to make sure it was ok and nothing deleted…must have spent nearly 2 weeks scanning through endless pages…and it just barely dawned on me to wonder…exactly…how the hell do data recovery tools collect “lost data”???
I get like a general idea of like how as long as like that “save location” isnt written over with new data, then technically that data is still…there???? I…thats as much as i understand.
Thanks much appreciated!
And for those wondering, it wasnt me, it was my first week on the job as the only SRA for that station and the person charged with training me for the day…i literally watched him highlight all the data, right click, and click delete on the data and then ask “where’d it all go?!?”
In: Technology
Your computer has a list of all the files on it so that it easily knows where to find them.
It’s called an index. Much like the index page of a book.
When you delete something, it’s simply removed from the index. This is the quickest method because you don’t need to actually delete any data.
Data recovery tools will scan the drive looking for files that are there but no longer in the index.. then if found intact will simply take a copy or put it back into the index so you can see it.
There’s limitations because generally when something is removed from the index then it will eventually be overwritten when you download something new.. but that might not happen right away.
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