Retaining control of your data

Although this group test looks at recovering lost data, there are some cases where you need to ensure that deleted data can’t be recovered by someone else.

Windows Recycle bin

Since the release of Windows 95, all Windows operating systems have incorporated the ‘Recycle bin’. Other than very large files, the default behaviour is that deleted files are simply moved to the Recycle bin, rather than being deleted, although there are circumstances where immediate deletion can occur.

Space is reserved for the Recycle bin; by default this is 10 per cent of the total drive volume (see Recycle bin properties). If the Recycle bin becomes full, then Windows will start deleting its contents as new files are added.

Data/identity theft and your old PC

If you are upgrading to a new PC and are about to get rid of the old one, or are throwing out an old hard disk, think carefully before you do.

Even if you have deleted the files or formatted the disk, it still contains personal data, passwords and sensitive business information. Such information can easily be retrieved by a knowledgeable criminal.

Some IT departments often just dump outdated PCs in skips outside the office for collection and disposal.

In an office a member of the PCW team formerly worked in, the IT department would frequently bin supposedly dead or unreliable hard disks from their servers. Staff would retrieve these disks, connect them to their desktop PCs and reformat them.

Most of these drives ran for several more years without a hitch. Anyone could have trawled these disks for sensitive company information if they had been so inclined.

To be safe, before passing on or throwing away a hard disk, it makes sense to run a data eraser program to overwrite your old files.

Such programs write a simple data pattern over the top of old data. Some of them will overwrite several patterns on multiple passes to truly bury any trace of residual magnetism from the old data recording.

Two examples of such data erasure programs are Kroll Ontrack Data Eraser and East Technologies East-Tec Eraser 2005.

Prevention is better than cure

Although it’s a lot more difficult to accidentally and permanently erase files in current operating systems, it certainly helps if you follow good practice in the way you handle files and organise your hard disks.

There are rather too many people using computers who don’t use the filing system properly and treat their hard disk like an invisible garbage dump for files.

Unfortunately this is partly because computers are pretty good at finding things and partly because a messy hard disk doesn’t look like a huge pile of unsorted paper burying their desk.

Confront these same people with a filing cabinet and some paperwork and they would be likely to at least take a shot at filing things in separate folders with sensible names and in alphabetic order.

This article is part of a grooup test. All articles in the test are as follows:
A quick recovery 
Active Data Recovery Active@ Undelete
Binary Biz Virtual Lab 
Ontrack Easy Recovery Lite 
PC Tools File Recover 5 
R-Tools Technology R-Studio
Stellar Phoenix Fat + NTFS
Retaining control of your data 
Broken drives and professional data retrieval labs