If I re-format my hard drive can ‘tha feds’ still find all my deleted porn??
Or is reformatting my hard drive ACTUALLY deleting EVERYTHING on the computer???
Thanks!
Reformatting will make it harder to recover files, but it still won’t stop “da Feds”. Just overwriting data (as many reformat programs will do) will defeat the standard undelete utilities, but if someone’s really serious about reading your hard drive, it’s possible to pick up “ghosts” of the previous values that a given spot on the disk once held.
In order to render data totally unreadable, you need to do something along the lines of overwriting the entire disk with the binary complement of the current data, and then overwrite the entire disk with random values, and then overwrite the whole thing yet again with zeros. If it’s that important to you that something not be read, you should probably just take the disk out, burn it, and buy a new one.
Ken, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, glad to have you with us.
Your question, however, belongs in GENERAL QUESTIONS forum, since it is not commenting on a specific Staff Report, and I have therefore moved it accordingly.
If what I’ve read about ‘tha feds’ is true, you could delete all your files, overwrite the entire disk, smash the drive with a hammer, soak it in salt water and cover the whole thing in tar, and somebody, somewhere, will be able to recover data from it.
It’s really only a matter of how badly someone wants to recover data, and how much they’re willing to spend doing it.
The only bits of data that are completely unrecoverable are overdue term papers, great American novels and doctoral theses.