Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Recovering data from a formatted hard disk

[Iain Buchanan <iaindb@netspace.net.au>]

On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 17:39 -0800, Grant wrote:
> 
> Almost everyone seems to agree that recovering data from a formatted
> drive is possible.  What is the process by which this is done?  I've
> read here that:
> 
> 1. The space between tracks contains historical data information.
> 
> and:
> 
> 2. There is a difference between a track written with a 0 and then
> overwritten with a 0 and a track written with a 1 and then overwritten
> with a 0.
> 
> Are these the two processes by which this data recovery is made possible?

They both rely on the fact that you can read what _was_ once written to
the hard drive by examining the spaces.  So that's one method.

The other method of recovering data is just to cat /dev/hda, but that
relies on the hd not being "wiped" (overwritten with 0's and 1's many
times in a semi-random fashion!).
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iain at netspace dot net dot au>

Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.

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