This actually happened to me,
I had this old phone that had a pattern lock. obviously, I didn’t know what was the correct pattern.
so I did a factory reset. When the phone booted I saw some pictures despite there was no SD card
or anything like that. Why did the files not get erased?? especially on older devices (2010-2013)
In: Technology
It probably depends on what the factory reset does.
The common things to reset are things like installed programs, settings, and OS state. If the factory reset only cares about those things, then files in the photos folder can easily be ignored. If the entire file system is rebuilt, only then would your photos be at risk of getting lost.
I remember reading once on reddit that when data is stored, it is stored in a little node in the memory. The are lots and lots of these little nodes. So when you take a picture for example it will be stored in node 1. Then you take another and its stored in node 2 and so on. The data stored in these nodes can’t be overwritten by new data.
Let’s say you deleted the first picture, all you’ve done is remove your access and overwrite lock from the node but the data will remain there until the node is needed or overwritten.
I think it was said that the old data won’t be overwritten until all empty nodes are filled.
So your data is still there, you just access it anymore.
I think this is how police and whatnot are able to catch people who do criminal things on their computers.
Sorry if I regurgitated this wrong 😅
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