Why Does Data Remain?
Data is stored on your hard drive in blocks. Each block has an address.
Files are an address to a particular block of data or sequence of blocks
When You Delete A File:
- The address associated with the file is now freed
- That means the file system is allowed to write new data to these addresses.
- However, to save time, it doesn’t actually remove the old data.
- It may write over the old data later, but only if it needs to
- Until the data is overwritten, all of it remains on the hard drive at the same address.
- To read that data again, all you need is software that accesses the residual blocks directly at that address.
- To completely delete the data, you need a secure data wipe tool.
- Size of the drive – If there is enough empty space available, most hard drives will write to that instead of overwriting old data.
- Usage of the drive – Frequent use of smaller files makes overwriting the old data statistically more likely over time.
- Identifiying Information
- Customer Databases
- Passwords
- Business Intelligence
- Intellectual Property
- Trade Secrets
