Computers File Undelete Utility

Neph asked me to post this, hope that's alright.

Anyway...

This program works because in Windows, no file is ever really deleted (unless you do a format). Deleting a file only deletes the thing that references the data on the drive- essentially it makes it so your computer doesn't know how to find the data.

This is why the police will still know you had that kiddie porn even if you deleted it before they catch you.

 

Interesting..
I'll have to try that out when I get home, because I'm in school on my iBook now.
Makes me wonder if there isn't a way to permanently delete the files anyway. I looked up a bit and found Chaos Shredder, but that thing overwrites those "backup" files with junk files. Sounds suspicious..

 

My error. I read it somewhere and didn't remember all the details. :sweat2:

I know though, that if the data is overwritten, then it is lost. Think of it like pencil impressions on a page. After you erase the pencil, if you were pressing down hard when you wrote it, you can still kinda see what was there, because of the indentations in the paper. If you really had to, you could carefully go over it and rewrite the whole thing.

But if you write over it, then the indentations are mixed up, covered by the new text and impossible to read.

Does that make any sense or am I babbling?

 

I could have sworn I mentioned that this paralleled an older thread...

Regardless, no, that statement is incorrect.

Let my try to explain it a little more simply. Let's say that there were two people in your HDD along with a million chalk boards. Ok?

One person is the 'boss' and he has in his hands a sheet of paper that tells him which chalkboards have pertinent information on them, and which ones don't. All he does is sit in his chair and tell the second guy what to do.

The second guy is a runner who dashes between all the chalkboards and writes whatever the boss tells him to write on which ever chalkboard. The Boss says write THIS on THAT chalkboard and the runner goes out and mindlessly writes over whatever was on the chalkboard before with the new information he was told to place down.

Let's say you have information (A file) called "Zanza loves Bleach" and it takes three chalkboards to write this information down. The boss looks at his sheet and sees that three chalkboards don't have anything important on them so he tells his runner to go out, find those chalkboards, and write down the information for "Zanza Loves Bleach".

The next day you want to get rid of "Zanza Loves Bleach" so you tell the Boss "Get rid of that information; Delete it." So the Boss looks at his sheet and adds a tac mark next to the chalkboards that have "Zanza Loves Bleach" on them, marking them as "open spaces".

For most people this is deletion. If you want that file back and you ask the boss "Where's Zanza Loves Bleach?" he wont look at those chalkboards he labled with a tac mark because that's data you told him to disregard- Those are chalkboards you told him he could write over at any time. The information is still on the chalkboards themselves, but because it's marked on his sheet he simply ignores them whenever you search for it.

Now there are two types of undelete programs-

One is a program that acts as a third person who runs up and down the rows of chalkboards looking for the ones that have the information for "Zanza Loves Bleach" and tells the Boss where their locations are. The boss re-writes the info down on his sheet and you "undeleted" "Zanza Loves Bleach".

The other, more common one, simply tells the boss to go ahead erase those tac marks and make the information on those chalkboards "important" again.

Good so far?

Ok, Let's say that you don't do that. Before you use your "Un-delete program" you tell the boss to delete "Zanza Loves Bleach" and write down "Zanza Loves Chad". The boss looks at his sheet, sees the three chalkboards that have "Zanza Loves Bleach" are 'open for use' (because you told him to 'delete' "Zanza Loves Bleach") and sends his runner out to erase "Zanza Loves Bleach" on those boards and write over "Zanza Loves Chad". The next day you decide that "Zanza Loves Chad" is all fine and dandy, but you'd like to have "Zanza Loves Bleach" back. So you get your undelete program and send him on his way. Search as he might he cannot, for the life of him, find "Zanza Loves Bleach" on any of the "open" chalkboards.

What's more, is the second kind of un-delete program is equally helpless because the chalkboards containing "Zanza Loves Bleach" have already been overwritten so there's no "tac marks" for the boss to erase anymore. You've already lost "Zanza Loves Bleach" and there's no way to get it back.

In both cases you're out of luck because the runner erased "Zanza Loves Bleach" and wrote "Zanza Loves Chad" over it on the chalkboards themselves.

That's why you need to hurry up and try to undelete programs as soon as you realize your mistake because once the little runner in your HDD writes over your files you're out of luck and can no longer un-delete them.

So to answer your question, No. The new files that overwrote your old files will not be overwritten by the old files if you undelete. The old files are gone for good at this point. Your new files are safe and sound unless you chose to delete them as well.


I hope all that made sense to someone other than myself.

~W

 

Recover it all.

Best recover program ever, actually saved me from my partition crash

- Teddz