Dont forget to link your facebook account to webrats

ronnym · 05-02-2008, 08:21 PM

Will we ever have the technology to recover pictures that have been overwritten? Is it technically possible?

Does law enforcement or other government agencies have that capability already?

Thanks

CWB · 05-02-2008, 10:40 PM

to a degree ...
a partially over-written file of any type is technically partially recoverable .
think of it like randomly scratching out and painting over bits and pieces of the mona lisa ... yes , you can recover those pieces that are not destroyed but that is all . the degree of recovery would depend on how many and how big the chunks were/are .

many files that are simply "deleted" into the recycle bin (for example) are not "gone" it is possible to get them back completely intact IF they have not been overwritten with data . in the case of files that have been partially overwritten , one can retrieve the data that remains .
the only sure fired way to completely get rid of a file is to overwrite the whole area allocated for that file plus it's "slackspace" with random data or a complete block write of some character/number ... and don't forget the back-up to some files !

as far as recovering a completely wiped file it would be akin to making something out of nothing .

05-02-2008, 10:40 PM	#2 (permalink)
CWB hells' troubleshooter Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: phobos west Posts: VMCLXIII Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts Rep Power: 1791	Re: overwritten jpegs to a degree ... a partially over-written file of any type is technically partially recoverable . think of it like randomly scratching out and painting over bits and pieces of the mona lisa ... yes , you can recover those pieces that are not destroyed but that is all . the degree of recovery would depend on how many and how big the chunks were/are . many files that are simply "deleted" into the recycle bin (for example) are not "gone" it is possible to get them back completely intact IF they have not been overwritten with data . in the case of files that have been partially overwritten , one can retrieve the data that remains . the only sure fired way to completely get rid of a file is to overwrite the whole area allocated for that file plus it's "slackspace" with random data or a complete block write of some character/number ... and don't forget the back-up to some files ! as far as recovering a completely wiped file it would be akin to making something out of nothing . __________________

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)