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Two common sources of confusion in data management

keith — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:45:41 +0000

There are two issues related to data recovery that seem to confuse many computer owners. The first is the process required to recover deleted files from external hard drive storage. For some reason many computer users do not understand that an external hard drive or any other type of external digital media is actually easier to recover files from than their desktop or laptop computer’s internal hard drive. The reason for this quite simple. When attempting to recover lost or deleted files from your computer’s internal hard drive, the very process of downloading the data recovery program onto your computer may erase the files you are hoping to recover. Files lost on an external drive cannot be overwritten during the data recovery program installation process.

The second issue that many computer owners do not understand is what is required to delete files forever. Simply emptying your Windows recycle bin or directly deleting a file from external digital storage does not erase the underlying file information. To delete files forever you must overwrite the information in the area of your hard drive that held the original file. The best way to do this is to use a file shredder program that purposely writes new random information onto the file areas.

Do all permanent deletion programs deliver on their claims?

keith — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:51:25 +0000

When purchasing a program to permanently delete files, how does one determine whether or not that program is actually performing its claimed application. The objective of a drive wipe or file shredder program is to overwrite the areas of your hard drive or other digital storage with random patterns of information many times over. This reduces the original file content to gibberish. So how then does one make certain that the information they have permanently erased from their computer is completely wiped clean?

A very simple method to test the effectiveness of a drive wipe program is to follow up that drive wipe with a quick scan using a data recovery tool. To save time you can create a file such as a Microsoft Word document, delete that file and then direct your file recovery tool to find it. You’ll notice that most quality data recovery programs can quickly and easily locate a recently deleted Microsoft Word document. Now take the same document and run it through your file shredder program. If you attempt to use the data recovery program on it now, the recovery process should fail and you have proven that the program you brought to permanently delete files is operating.

The quick and efficient Remo data eraser

keith — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:25:58 +0000

If you think that deleting or even reformatting your computer’s hard drive or other digital media will permanently erase the information of files stored on them, you are completely wrong. When you delete a file, either purposefully or accidentally, all that occurs is that the Windows operating system marks the space that file occupied as available to be overwritten. Unless and until new information is written over that data, the file information can be recovered using basic data recovery software. This means that anyone with access to your computer can read and copy all of your private information. This same situation occurs when one reformats a drive. Reformatting merely marks all available space as empty. But, as with file deletion, until you overwrite the data’s sectors on that drive, the information can be recovered. This is fine when one wants to recover lost files, but when we are trying to permanently remove information from our computer’s hard drive, we need a more powerful solution. That solution is the Remo data eraser.

The Remo data eraser allows you to easily choose either individual files or to wipe data from hard drive storage in it’s entirety and permanently erase all of the information you need to discard. This is done by overwriting the stored information in a random pattern many times over. This is essentially the same as tearing up a piece of paper with records on it into millions of tiny pieces and tossing those pieces into the wind.