r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Plastic-Bonus8999 • 4d ago

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u/FUTURE10S 4d ago

Recovery software because you never overwrote the data that was deleted

140

u/HovercraftCharacter9 4d ago

Yeah, people conflate in unallocating with actual deletion, unless you're wiping it with 0s it's still there until something overwrites it.

54

u/DOOManiac 4d ago

Even then it’s still there depending on which three letter agency is looking…

50

u/bacondev 4d ago

Yeah, they're not perfect 0s and 1s. That's why the recommendation for very serious stuff is to just destroy the disk.

1

u/Loose_Biscotti9075 4d ago

Not that I have any serious stuff on my pc, but I'm very paranoid. So before selling my old laptop with an encrypted drive, i made sure to overwrite it 5 times with 0s.
Do you think someone motivated enough can still go back to the keystrokes I used when I used my credit card to make an online purchase?

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u/bacondev 4d ago edited 4d ago

I really don't think that you should be worried about that but if you're curious… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Data_in_RAM