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Some coworkers and I are discussing about Hard-disk recovery and one of my coworker said that is possible to recovery a HD even after formatting and rewrite all your space again.

The argument of my coworker is: the magnetic data in disk is never replaced, exist various layers in the disk, even after formatting and all the space rewritten with new data, this new data is written in a new layer.

After formatting a Hard-drive and after rewrite ALL SPACE with new data is possible to recovery the data before formatting?

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2 Answers 2

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No that's impossible. In the past the width of the track was not erased entirely with formatting, so after formatting there was still enough magnetic data left to recover the data. Modern days Harddrives have a very narrow width track and especially when data is overwritten again (what is also done with secure erase but then with zero's) the old data is not recoverable. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_formatting

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Actually it would be possible to recover some data but not everything. You would need high end instruments to analyse a harddisk that have been wipe and rewritten with all zeros or with ones, multiples times.

You can check :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence

So you might be able to get small part of files but not full files.

Also you must know that there is multiple way to format a drive. A quick format will not erase data:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686

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