Shredded Data Recovery

[farhaj]

I have an external Hard Drive. I got it checked with HXD ...
And, it shows that most of the Binary Data written in it has converted to 0...

It seems more like that the data has been shredded.. Attaching the Image along as well..




Is their any way at all to retreive back the shredded data from the Drive..

 

[samuria]

Assuming the whole disk is the same recovery is slim to none did you run something to do that?

 

[farhaj]

Assuming the whole disk is the same recovery is slim to none did you run something to do that?

1) Why do you say the chances are slim..?
2) I did not get your point of running what..?

 

[AK6DN]

1) Why do you say the chances are slim..?
2) I did not get your point of running what..?

Unless you work for the NSA the probability of recovering your data from that drive is exactly ZERO.

You do have a backup copy, don't you?

If not it is a good lesson to learn that you NEVER have just one instance of your important data. NEVER.

 

[LMiller7]

If data has been overwritten, for whatever reason, there is no recovery. At least none that is remotely practical.

It was about 1996 that Peter Gutmann proposed a method of recovering overwritten data from a disk drive. This was verified as a proof of concept. This was academic research, much of which never becomes practical. How much real world data, if any, has been recovered by this method is unknown. The only organizations that might have this capability aren't talking. Modern hard drives use a different recording method and Gutmann himself has expressed doubt whether it is now possible.

In any event this method is far beyond the capabilities of a home user. It certainly is not using some special software. Never rely on data recovery. Even professional data recovery can fail.

This is just one of the reasons why you need to maintain backups. Data of any importance at all should have at least one backup copy. Data of particular importance should have 2 or more backup copies, preferably stored in different locations. Hard drives, new or old, do fail, often without warning or apparent reason. There are many other causes of data loss as well.

If you don't have backups you have learned a valuable lesson. It is unfortunate that many people only learn it the hard way.

I have heard many horror stories of lost data. One of the worst was in some organization several people were storing their data on one flash drive. This went on for several months. The drive failed. It seems that in all that time no one had ever bothered to make a backup.

 

[farhaj]

I have an external Hard Drive. I got it checked with HXD ...
And, it shows that most of the Binary Data written in it has converted to 0...

It seems more like that the data has been shredded.. Attaching the Image along as well..

View attachment 411973


Is their any way at all to retreive back the shredded data from the Drive..

Seeing that Pictures in the HxD Image, does it really show that
1) The data has been overwritten as 0..
2) The Data has been Shredded rather than formatted..?

 

[jumanji]

I have an external Hard Drive. I got it checked with HXD ...
And, it shows that most of the Binary Data written in it has converted to 0...

It seems more like that the data has been shredded.. Attaching the Image along as well..

View attachment 411973


Is their any way at all to retreive back the shredded data from the Drive..

Totally irrelevant and misleading post.

1. If a single sector has all zeros or umpteen zeros it does not mean that the disk has been wiped. I can show you a thousand sectors on my System drive which have all zeros or umpteen zeros. My system has not lost any data.

2. You have posted a Sector map of sector 0 which is an MBR sector ( appears to be a Protective MBR of a GPT drive). I can see that the disk has a Windows Unique ID and a single partition table.

Please stop asking/posting such misleading questions.

If someone has deliberately wiped the data on that HDD by formatting/overwriting, none here can help you to recover the data. Stop.

Are you repeating these same threads putting it into different basket? It looks like.

Retrieve Data after A full Format

WD External Hard Drive Not Showing on My PC

 

[farhaj]

Totally irrelevant and misleading post.

1. If a single sector has all zeros or umpteen zeros it does not mean that the disk has been wiped. I can show you a thousand sectors on my System drive which have all zeros or umpteen zeros. My system has not lost any data.

2. You have posted a Sector map of sector 0 which is an MBR sector ( appears to be a Protective MBR of a GPT drive). I can see that the disk has a Windows Unique ID and a single partition table.

Please stop asking/posting such misleading questions.

If someone has deliberately wiped the data on that HDD by formatting/overwriting, none here can help you to recover the data. Stop.

Are you repeating these same threads putting it into different basket? It looks like.

Retrieve Data after A full Format

WD External Hard Drive Not Showing on My PC

I am not asking misleading questions..
It is just that exactly, I did not knew what happened with it..

is it a format and what type of format has been done..?
that is why I asked here...
someone told me about Hxd, and I shared the Image here... It showed 0 in most of the parts.. so, with that I think It got formated but is it retrieveable.. And what type of 0 format is it called..?

 

[samuria]

If the whole disk has 0 written to it then something has been run to stop any recovery normally any security disk wipe would write 0 several times to the drive and would take some time. That's why I asked what you had run on the disk.

If only one sector has 0 written that's a different story a normal format just clears partition tables. Etc and data is still there you need to look at other sectors to see if they are 0

 

[farhaj]

If the whole disk has 0 written to it then something has been run to stop any recovery normally any security disk wipe would write 0 several times to the drive and would take some time. That's why I asked what you had run on the disk.

If only one sector has 0 written that's a different story a normal format just clears partition tables. Etc and data is still there you need to look at other sectors to see if they are 0

1) Actually, it was not run by me.. someone did it... And what exactly was done on it.. I don't know..
2) I checked it with the hxd program and it showed in the starting some data (as seen in the image); after that it all shows 0... And also in the other sector the same is done ( in the starting their is some data) and after that everything shows up 0...
3) And if a securtiy wipe is done it, then what are the chances to get it back...? nothing can be done..?

 

[samuria]

As per most post the security wipe is desgned to wipe the drive to military standerds so they chances as I said are slim to none

 

[farhaj]

As per most post the security wipe is desgned to wipe the drive to military standerds so they chances as I said are slim to none

What are those standards..?
and the security wipe is specially deisgned only for them..?

 

[Barman58]

Military Standards or Military Grade Data Wiping or Encryption are confidential and the details are only available to security officers of the various military Labs - the ability to use them is granted to non military personnel as they are basically beyond reversal, once it's gone it isn't coming back.

Before wiping any hard drive or storage medium it is the user's responsibility to ensure they have a suitable backup copy of the data if this is likely to be needed again

 

[townsbg]

File recovery foe files deleted using just the recycle bin is never guaranteed and potentially expensive. I think that's already been stated. Factoring in a file shredding utility and it's likely that you won't be able to get it back. That's by design. With file shredding part to all of the file is completely overwritten with either random data or zeros, depending on how the software is setup, and potentially multiple times. If it was easy to recover the file afterwards then there wouldn't be any point to anyone doing it. Supposedly computer forensics can do limited file recovery but it is a long and drawn out process that is very specialized. If it's really that important you can try to hire a firm to attempt to recover it but be prepared to shell out big bucks. Are you missing data or are you just wanting to know what someone else used your hard drive for?

 

[maxseven]

Totally irrelevant and misleading post.

1. If a single sector has all zeros or umpteen zeros it does not mean that the disk has been wiped. I can show you a thousand sectors on my System drive which have all zeros or umpteen zeros. My system has not lost any data.

2. You have posted a Sector map of sector 0 which is an MBR sector ( appears to be a Protective MBR of a GPT drive). I can see that the disk has a Windows Unique ID and a single partition table.

Please stop asking/posting such misleading questions.

If someone has deliberately wiped the data on that HDD by formatting/overwriting, none here can help you to recover the data. Stop.

Are you repeating these same threads putting it into different basket? It looks like.

Retrieve Data after A full Format

WD External Hard Drive Not Showing on My PC

I share jumanji's instinct's about these threads. Can't tell if OP is trying to recover data, or instead trying to make certain his files are unrecoverable.