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jsg877 15 points ago +18 / -3

That's not true. I assure you. If I had the ability to look at your computer. I could find things from the day you bought it. :)

Sectors on a disk, there allocation, based on program specs, etc etc have instructions stored for information retrieval for a very very long time.

I accidentally found a Facebook friend of mine from a Mozilla page that was saved without my knowledge in 2006. This was 4 months ago. The harddrive was "wiped" "OS reinstalled" etc etc.

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deleted 8 points ago +8 / -0
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deleted 6 points ago +6 / -0
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Eu-is-socialist 4 points ago +4 / -0

Not if you overwrite it .

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MakeAmericaLegendary 3 points ago +3 / -0

Even then, it can be restored with great effort. They likely won't do that.

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Eu-is-socialist 5 points ago +5 / -0

Please ... enlighten me ... I'm 99.9% certain YOU CAN'T restore shit if you overwrite it.

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MakeAmericaLegendary 8 points ago +8 / -0

Data is stored as magnetized bits on a disk, with north and south representing our two forms of data (ones and zeroes), right? The problem is that we can't perfectly flip poles in any particular bit, and there will be some residual traces of what the bit used to be such as a weaker magnetic pull, fine-grained imperfections, and other forensic factors. So we can use those different pieces of data to figure out what bits were one, two, and even more overwrites in the past (with increasing difficulty every overwrite).

I'm not familiar with similar forensics on Solid State Drives, but I could look into it if you want me to.

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deleted 3 points ago +3 / -0