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by 1Simmy on January 9th, 2007

1Simmy

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What is meant by overwriting a file? How do you do you overwrite a file? If you reboot a computer is a file still retrievable even if deleted from the recycle bin before? Thanks

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  • by Sabatier on January 9th, 2007

    Sabatier

    Overwriting a file means that it's contents has been replaced by some other content.

    Like when you copy a file from one location to another, edit it in its new location and then move it back to its original location. You changed the content of the file and now your overwriting the original file with your changes.

    About rebooting. If you delete a file from the recycle bin it is not retrievable even if you reboot. There are ways to recover files from hard drives but it is expensive and you cant do it on your own without help from a company or some special software.

    I hope this helps. If you need more feel free to leave comments.

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    • Thanks loads!

      1Simmy

      by 1Simmy on January 9th, 2007

    • Moving it back doesn't necessarily overwrite the original because file systems are efficient and do as little as necessary.
      Try moving a large file (150+ MB) from one location to another on the same drive. If it actually moved the file, it would take a while. Instead, it just updates some directory entries so the same physical file appears in the new location. Making a "copy" will allocate two versions of the file, so moving it back will cause one to be deleted. On the same partition, the fastest way to do that is to unallocate the one being overwritten and update the directory to point to the one being moved. It will look like you moved it, but it will be done quickly without overwriting the original.
      There's a lot of inexpensive recovery software targeting home users instead of forensics. Also anyone with technical skill can recover deleted data and usually for free (eg http://www.sleuthkit.org - I also highly recommend his book if you want to know the recovery process in detail).

      csyron

      by csyron on July 25th, 2008

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