I got the basics. Deleting a file simply tells the system that the sectors it occupied are now available for new data to be written on.
But if you want a more secure deleting why cannot you just overwrite everything with zeroes? If the computer system is only working at its core by manipulating zeroes and ones, why is it said that physically destroying the drive the information is stored on, is the only secure way to make sure nothing is left on it?
In: Technology
There’s a lot of reasons. The easiest answer is that no matter what you do, it is possible old information exists on your drive without your awareness. The safest way to ensure information stays private is to destroy to drive because it is foolproof and generally inexpensive.
If your information is valuable enough to keep secret, it’s more valuable than a $200 hard drive.
By simply overwriting the drive, there’s a lot that can go wrong.
For example, computer drives can develop “bad sectors” which can’t be read or overwritten. When this happens, the computer will generally just save information somewhere else. It is possible that your drive still has old information in these bad sectors that could be recovered by a specialist.
For non-solid-state drives, magnets are used to arrange bits (generally on tape). Even if you overwrite the content of the tape, information may still be partially recoverable from the state of the magnetic field itself.
For solid-state drives, your computer is programmed to spread activity out over the entire drive to prevent wear. This means you might *think* you wrote over bits, but in reality your computer shifted the information around to extend the life of the drive. There’d be no way for you to know without doing a forensic analysis of your drive.
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