Can they really do this????

[mol3000]

I read about people tryin to delete their hard drives but police got a program that can get files even after their deleted and formated..... if this is true what software out there that does this because i need to get some stuff i deleted by accident

[adam]

There are tons of programs that can do this. When you delete files they don't go anywhere, the sectors storing that information stay exactly the same. Your operating system just recognizes those sectors as being free so any further data that is added to your hard drive may or may not write over these sectors. I use R-Studio Undelete ($50) to recover lost files. So far I've recovered everything that I ever lost but you have to act quickly. Perform the recovery as soon as possible to avoid writing over the lost data.

As far as the police are concerned, there are ways of recovering data, or at least information about that data (filesize, dates, some text strings etc..) even after it has been written over even numerous times. But for that you usually have to have a professional work on it which is very expensive. But anyone can do simple data recovery with the right software. Just do a google search for "data recovery" and you will find tons of relatively cheap software that can do it, maybe even some freeware as well.

[jeex]

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/darktips/story/0,24330,3547954,00.html

scroll down to that acid & thermite section & check out the videos.

if the federales ever come to your house, one flip of the switch and your drives are toast & cant be used as evidence against you.. and your house will probably burn down..

maybe you could flip the switch then throw the computer out the window so you dont get charged with arson.

[Cobra]

I use CyberShredder:

http://www.cylog.org/utils_9.asp

Jeex, on-board thermite charges? That's a damn good idea! BTW, does anyone know of a good, home-made first fire mix? I don't think a magnesium strip is enough by itself to get it going...

Cobra

[The village idiot]

There are ways to "erase" the data without burning the drives. I've written about it before, so if you are really concerned, then get looking.


Some dynamite or C4 would work very well too Just make sure to put a delay on the charge

[Guest]

How about norton sysworks wiper. Do u know if data can be recovered after a goverment wipe?

[Capmaster]

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/darktips/story/0,24330,3547954,00.html

scroll down to that acid & thermite section & check out the videos.

if the federales ever come to your house, one flip of the switch and your drives are toast & cant be used as evidence against you.. and your house will probably burn down..

maybe you could flip the switch then throw the computer out the window so you dont get charged with arson.

That would be fine if I couldn't actually see myself getting up at 2am for a DVDRHELP fix, having a brain fart and accidentally throwing the "self-destruct" switch instead of the power switch

Maybe mount a degaussing coil inside the HD case?

[pacmania_2001]

Some sort of electro-magnet device mounted in the case would do the job.

[Capmaster]

Some sort of electro-magnet device mounted in the case would do the job.

As opposed to a degaussing coil? Thanks pac ....that's useful :P

[northcat_8]

Maybe you shouldn't have things on your HD that the government could use against you in the first place.

[Capmaster]

Maybe you shouldn't have things on your HD that the government could use against you in the first place.

What about things my significant other could use against me ...like midget clown porn?

[housepig]

most posters are missing the point - the original poster wants recovery / forensic software to recover something he deleted - he's not trying to make something unrecoverable.

[northcat_8]

most posters are missing the point - the original poster wants recovery / forensic software to recover something he deleted - he's not trying to make something unrecoverable.

True...I am sorry, I am easily distracted....thanks for getting us refocused.

@mol3000~

I have a program on my home PC for data recovery....I'll see if I can find it this evening and I'll post the name. I didn't pay for it I know, so it was a free download or shareware.

[mol3000]

thanks housepig I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS USED FOR RECOVERY.... ESPECIALLY IF U REFORMATTED THE HARD DRIVE ALREADY

[housepig]

the two I can think of off the top of my head are SpinRite and Easy Recovery Pro. I haven't done any serious work with them, though, so I don't know how well they work.

[pacmania_2001]

Some sort of electro-magnet device mounted in the case would do the job.

As opposed to a degaussing coil? Thanks pac ....that's useful :P

Thats what you get for not reading the thread before posting.

[Capmaster]

Some sort of electro-magnet device mounted in the case would do the job.

As opposed to a degaussing coil? Thanks pac ....that's useful :P

Thats what you get for not reading the thread before posting.

I'm glad I never do that

[Faustus]

If you got the cash for it Easy Recovery Pro was used by a friend of mine to recover data of a drive that was physically ok but somehow had its partition go poof on it. Pull thats stuff right off, along with remains of files I had deleted LONG ago, scarey stuff really.

He did it at his job, then I was like, cool software maybe I'll have to get it. He said he wouldn't suggest it, then I saw why: http://buyonline.ontrack.com/ecom/catalog.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1

But I can vouch the the software does indeed work.

[mol3000]

i found easy recovery pro and used it and it pulled up a lot of stuff but never pulled up the names.... its all seperated by like " .dll folders " or " .wav folders " my thing is i lost a lot of video which where mpeg and i am def trying to get them back but i dont see them on there..... were they rename something else or something?????????

[Faustus]

i found easy recovery pro and used it and it pulled up a lot of stuff but never pulled up the names.... its all seperated by like " .dll folders " or " .wav folders " my thing is i lost a lot of video which where mpeg and i am def trying to get them back but i dont see them on there..... were they rename something else or something?????????

I'm not really qualified to answer that question since I didn't recovery mine myself and I dont own the software, all my stuff had file names though so likely if found stuff to far gone and doesn't know the name any longer.

[mol3000]

ok... well i got r-studio.... it seems like it recovered something but it dont look like files... under the drive that i told it to look for stuff for... it just says recongnized 0, 1, 2 etc and when i click on one of them on the right hand side it says the fat size, clusters etc but nothing about files..... did i do it wrong?????? how should i had done it?????

[housepig]

came across another program that might help:

http://www.handyrecovery.com/

[adam]

If you read the documentation for R-Studio its pretty self explanatory. After telling it to scan the drive it gives you a huge list of branching directories to look through. It basically looks like you are looking in your computer's registry. And within each there are various files listed by name. Couldn't be easier.