On Tuesday 31 January 2006 01:03, Grant wrote: > Hello! I've heard that data can be recovered from a formatted hard > disk. Lucky for me I don't have any interest in actually doing this, > but I got in an argue\ment with a buddy last night about whether or > not it was possible. I'm sure I've read that the government and other > well-funded institutions have this capability. Is it true?
Formatting only really wipes the superblock, so if you can rebuild it, you've got your data back. Different filesystems use different superblock methods, so formatting with a different fs can make that harder. Until you flip every single bit on the disk, at least twice, some 3 or more times (naturally a single flip isn't enough, you'll have a mirror image!), something can be recovered, if you've got the money, skill, and patience. But we're talking the odd file, or part of file here, nothing more. The data can also been seen, so warping platters isn't enough either. -- Mike Williams -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
