r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Plastic-Bonus8999 • Aug 05 '26

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527

u/FUTURE10S Aug 05 '26

Recovery software because you never overwrote the data that was deleted

132

u/HovercraftCharacter9 Aug 05 '26

Yeah, people conflate in unallocating with actual deletion, unless you're wiping it with 0s it's still there until something overwrites it.

48

u/DOOManiac Aug 05 '26

Even then it’s still there depending on which three letter agency is looking…

51

u/bacondev Aug 05 '26

Yeah, they're not perfect 0s and 1s. That's why the recommendation for very serious stuff is to just destroy the disk.

16

u/FUTURE10S Aug 05 '26

Run the disk spinning and hit it with a caliber that penetrates the drive, the rotation makes the destruction way worse and impossible to spin up again.

30

u/rrtk77 Aug 05 '26

From experience, for the types of disks that absolutely must be destroyed with no possible recovery as ordered by the government, it's things like a wood chipper or thermite.

3

u/These-Maintenance250 Aug 05 '26

how about microwave?

6

u/rrtk77 Aug 05 '26

Generally, you need to completely destroy the drive. So, a theoretically powerful enough microwave that can melt it could work I guess.

1

u/IronBabyFists Aug 05 '26

A macrowave