be careful; Most formatted hard drives are still recoverable

Secure Data Recovery, which specializes in data recovery, shared the results of their recent project. The purpose of this project is to determine the number of files that can be recovered from used hard drives.

Secure Data Recovery company randomly bought 100 used hard drives and tried to recover their data using their tools. Of course, the company decided not to dedicate special resources to recovering data from secure or encrypted drives.

written by TekradarSecure Data Recovery recovered data from 35 formatted drives, 30 damaged hard drives, and one encrypted drive. None of these hard drives were of the hybrid type, and in total more than 5.7 million files were obtained from them, of which 3.1 million files were related to only one hard drive. It is worth noting that the oldest drive recovered in this project was a 2.5-inch Western Digital model from 2004.

Secure Data Recovery’s findings remind us of a very important fact: most users don’t make an effort to completely clean their damaged or old hard drives after replacing them. In other words, only a few users completely and permanently delete their files before selling their hard drives.

A spokesperson for Secure Data Recovery says the company did not view any of the recovered files after completing its investigation and then permanently and completely destroyed all of their data.

Jake Resnick, CEO of Secure Data Recovery Labs, says to back up important data before formatting your hard drive. Then, choose your preferred method based on your need to delete files permanently. For example, Erasure software allows you to completely format a hard drive so that it can be used later.

In addition, to completely destroy the hard disk, it can be placed in industrial shredders to turn into very small and useless pieces. In general, it is more secure to destroy data storage devices by physical means.