Are there programs recover all data written on a drive since purchased

Thebeholder · 10 May 2013

Hi everyone.

I only saw that all data recovery programs I used them(such as,Testdisk, Mini power data recovery, recovery my files and so on) recover the most recent data formated, deleted from a partition.

Are there any programs to recover all data written on a drive since it was purchased?

In other words,

First, I have data on a partition. Then, I formated it. After that, I wrote other data on the same partition. Next, I formated a partition.
Finally, when I used any data recovery programs, it would only recover the final data written on a partition.
I would like to ask if there programs to let all data(data and data, and so on) be recovered.

fireberd · 11 May 2013

Programs can recover data if there has not been anything written to the drive sectors where the data was. However, if something has been written to the drive sector(s) then it can't be recovered with recovery software available to most users.

Government and law (police) agencies have software that can read (recover) data that has been overwritten on hard drives.

Alejandro85 · 11 May 2013

You may need a professional service with specialized techniques to do such a recover. It's not entirely impossible to undelete files a few reformats ago, depending on how much you've used the HD, but it's not cheap either. Regular home programs can't simply go beyond what has been overwritten.

LMiller7 · 11 May 2013

Software recovery methods can only recover data that has not been overwritten. Once data has been overwritten it is impossible to recover with any software.

In theory data might be recovered from the residual magnetic information left when a file is overwritten. This based on a paper written by Peter Gutman of Auckland University in 1996. But it is a matter of controversy how much data, if any, was ever actually recovered by such methods. In any event it would require very specialized (and equally expensive) equipment and very high level of skill and knowledge. That pretty much limits it to organizations such as the FBI. Commercial recovery, if possible at all, would be extremely expensive.

But that was 1996 when hard drives used quite different technology than now. There is considerable doubt that such recovery techniques, if they ever worked, have any relevance to modern hard drives. It has no relevance to SSDs.

See these articles for more information:
Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
Is overwritten data really unrecoverable? | Computerworld Blogs

The best way to secure your data is not data recovery but maintaining backups. Files of any importance require at least one backup copy while those of particular importance require 2 or backup copies. Having no backups is asking for trouble.

gigagiggles · 11 May 2013

"Data" is somewhat generic and vague. The bits "0" and "1" can be cloned from one device to another. In that sense, it's recoverable. What's needed is a program that has algorithms which make sense of the sequences of "0" and "1". As I understand it, file formats have digital headers and other info to indicate the common file extensions and how the rest of the file's contents are organized. The algorithms are written to look for such headers and other info. Unfortunately, if the files are fragmented and there is no recoverable master file table structure for the device, then such files are partially recovered. And if the format is non-standard, then there wouldn't be an algorithm written to look for such headers. Of course, deep pockets can overcome such obstacles.

Dsprague · 14 May 2013

LMiller7 said:

Software recovery methods can only recover data that has not been overwritten. Once data has been overwritten it is impossible to recover with any software.

In theory data might be recovered from the residual magnetic information left when a file is overwritten. This based on a paper written by Peter Gutman of Auckland University in 1996. But it is a matter of controversy how much data, if any, was ever actually recovered by such methods. In any event it would require very specialized (and equally expensive) equipment and very high level of skill and knowledge. That pretty much limits it to organizations such as the FBI. Commercial recovery, if possible at all, would be extremely expensive.

But that was 1996 when hard drives used quite different technology than now. There is considerable doubt that such recovery techniques, if they ever worked, have any relevance to modern hard drives. It has no relevance to SSDs.

See these articles for more information:
Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
Is overwritten data really unrecoverable? | Computerworld Blogs

The best way to secure your data is not data recovery but maintaining backups. Files of any importance require at least one backup copy while those of particular importance require 2 or backup copies. Having no backups is asking for trouble.

Fore reference the former CFO of the company that I work for accidentally Wiped his drive a few times and asked us to get the data back from it (still to this day have no idea what he was doing) the cost for having the drive recovered was some where in the range of 700 - 1000 US dollars so unless your willing to pay a hefty price to get that data back its not going to happen granted those prices may be completely wrong this was about three years back.

bobafetthotmail · 17 May 2013

fireberd said:

Government and law (police) agencies have software that can read (recover) data that has been overwritten on hard drives.

That can require also expensive hardware as well, like clean rooms to disassemble the disk and semi-magical devices to read the disk platters without using the drive's own heads.
It's murderously expensive.

A Guy · 19 May 2013

Law enforcement agencies have various software that they use for forensic data recovery off supposedly wiped drives. Programs such as EnCase, not readily available to individuals. Overwritten data is not easily recovered, but it can be done. A Guy

logicearth · 19 May 2013

A Guy said:

..Overwritten data is not easily recovered, but it can be done...

I hope you guys know the real world is nothing like it is on TV, those CSI shows for example a lot of the things they do are fake. Recovering data from a hard drive, overwritten data, is just theories. There is no real practical evidence showing that it is even remotely possible (even by the CIA/FBI).

You would be lucky to get anything that is not gibberish back. Be sure to take into consideration the data density of today's hard drive. We can fit 1 TB of data onto a single platter for a 3.5" HDD. Compare that to a 5 GB 3.5" HDD before 2001. The bits on modern HDDs are extremely tiny, not leaving much room for "residue".

For further research see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_er...rwrites_needed

bobafetthotmail · 19 May 2013

which is why I said clean rooms and semi-magical disk platter reading devices. The drive's own read/write heads aren't able to pick up so faint traces.

Now I admit it's not horribly up-to-date info, but I'm pretty sure it did work around 5 years ago.