Considering donating your personal laptop or recycling your hard drives? Be sure you have securely cleared all the sensitive information on your hard drives. With various customer level data recovery software, one could easily retrieve deleted files from your storage devices, even if you have formatted them repeatedly before you make the disposal.
Unsafe approaches of Data Disposal
We have talked about why deleted files can be recovered in previous articles.
Various data recovery software, such as H Data Recovery Software, takes advantage of the mechanism of deletion. When we delete a file, the file system only removes the address pointer to that file. But the file itself as raw data is still there. The computer just marks it as “deleted, space available”. Before new files settle in and overtake the newly freed space, data recovery software can implement their algorithms to scan and reconstruct the deleted files as they were and restore them to local drives.
The same goes to formatting. When we quick format a memory card or hard disk, the file system only clears the address table to all files. The operating system will not locate any files without their index so when you look at the hard drive you would not see any data and assume the drive is erased. In fact, the files as raw data are still there but they are no longer exist as files. They are hidden from users and will be freely overwritten, or be recovered by user or unauthorized infiltrators.
Proper Disposal of Data
As is mentioned above, data would be unlikely to recover if they are overwritten. By overwriting an old file, which is complex combinations of ones and zeros, the data patterns are re-arranged to form the new file. That is why most safe disposal methods involve overwriting.
Having a strategy for reliably erasing data files is an essential part of managing data securely and is relevant at various stages in the data cycle.
At the conclusion of a research, data files which are not to be preserved need to be disposed of securely. Unfortunately, deleting files or reformatting a hard drive will not prevent the possible recovery of data from the drive.
1. Erasing Hard Disk Drives
Erasing, also known as wiping, is a kind of overwriting. Various software is available, such as DBAN, for the secure erasing of files from hard drives. This kind of software is designed to overwrite the hard disk drives with random ones and zeros repeatedly. Its purpose is to blur the residual pattern so that even the most advanced lab-level recovery tools can only recover negligible fragments, if not none, of data from previous files.
2. Degaussing Hard Disk Drives
For hard disk drives, billions of small magnetic domains are used to store data. These domains make up the writable surface of hard disk drives with magnetized cells represent "1", while demagnetized cells represent "0".
The degaussing method uses a powerful magnetic field that demagnetizes all of the cells, neutralizing the data stored. When handling the data disposal of a large bulk of HDDs, degaussing is often preferred.
3. Resetting Solid State Drives
Solid state drives work differently from hard disk drives. SSDs read data by judging the presence or absence of electrons inside SSD flash memories. Erasing and degaussing mentioned above cannot be relied on when disposing of data on SSDs. Instead, major SSD manufacturers provide tools for resetting SSDs, which is a process of flushing out all the electrons and resetting the SSDs to the original state. This process basically writes the memories full of "1". If you cannot acquire such tools, you can read on for physical disposal.
Secure Disposal of Storage Media
Data are represented by physical substances, thus the most reliable way to dispose of data is physical destruction, that is, if these devices are no longer in your future plans.
There are so many ways you could physically destroy a storage device. You could have them shredded by certificated shredding service providers, or you could roll up your sleeves and hammer them to pieces. You could hold a trial by fire, acid or soap water, or you could drill holes all over them. If your data is extremely sensitive, drilling one hole isn't sufficient, as with some expensive lab devices and a clean room, people could read around the hole and recover other intact data from the disk. Also, when you are destroying a storage device, aim for the parts where the data are actually stored, for example, the platters in HDDs and NAND flash memories in SSDs.
I believe a lot of people really enjoy the feeling of frequently emptying the Windows Recycle Bin. To see gigabytes of junks sent into oblivion and precious storage space freed up is truly satisfying. Some people won't even bother temporarily put unwanted files into Recycle Bin in the first place, they tend to use Shift + Delete to permanently delete file right away. The downside is that, when you realized you've deleted the wrong file, you won't be able to restore it from the Recycle Bin. But don't worry if this really happens to you. Here are two useful ways to recover permanently deleted files.
Restore Previous Versions
This method requires that you have enabled Windows File History feature. If you wish to restore a particular version of your current file, you can access older versions of a file by right-clicking on it in File Explorer, and then select Properties. In the new window that opens, select the Previous Versions for quick access to archival versions of your file.
You can also access these archived personal files by selecting Update & security > Backup > More options > Restore files from a current backup. This interface shows different versions of files that are available. Click the arrow to navigate through time periods. Browse and select any of these files and click to preview the contents. Hit the green button to restore the file of your chosen version back to your computer.
The File History feature is only available if you have enabled Windows File History feature. And this feature is limited, as it only backs up files located in user account's libraries like Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders. Rather than applications and programs, it only backs up the files you personally created.
Recover Permanently Deleted Files with H Data Recovery Software
If you failed to get back your folder with File History, you can try to recover permanently deleted files with H Data Recovery Software. Unlike the first solution, it has almost no limitations. You can recover files from emptied recycle bin, re-formatted hard drives, corrupted camera SD cards, deleted partitions...
Here's how to recover permanently deleted files with just a few steps:
Step 1. Launch H Data Recovery Software and click on the first module.
Step 2. Choose the drive where the files are used to be. Click Next to start the scan.
Step 3. The scan process could last a few seconds to complete, depending on your system. When the scan is completed, you will be able to see all the previously deleted files listed. Choose the files you want to restore and click on next.
Step 4. Select a directory to put the files that are about to be restored. Click Next to start the final recovering process. There, you should have all the files back!
Nowadays, you can see SD cards being widely used on many devices like smartphones and cameras to extend storage capacity. Unlike built-in storage, SD cards can be removed and accessed on other devices. The frequent plug in and out makes SD cards prone to damage and potential data loss.
You might have received error messages like "The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable" or "Disk in drive X:\ is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" before. However, to be sure the problem is actually caused by partition corruption, you need to first check the SD card for any potential physical failures.
1.First, we need to make sure that the SD card is actually at fault. If you've inserted an SD card into your laptop or PC's built-in slot and nothing happens, try using a USB card reader and try different ports. Connect your SD card to another device if you have access to one.
2. Check if your card is shown up in Disk Manager. You can open Disk Management by typing diskmgmt.msc into the Run dialog and press Enter.If it is there, see if Windows has assigned any drive letter to it, manually assign a letter to it if not. Also, check if there are any icons (yellow question mark) under Device Manager. Renew device driver or re-enable device to try to solve the problem.
3. Check if metal wires in the card slot are corrupted or twisted. Many SD cards support hot plug, which means you can insert or remove the card while the device is still running. But frequent plug and unplug can result in twisted or rusty metal wires in the card slot. Use a needle to straighten the wires if they are bend or remove the rust if they are rusty.
4. Check if the SD card is clean. Dirt or oil stain can cause the SD cards undetectable by computers. Check whether there are dark spots around the metal area of the card. Clean with alcohol or water. Then, dry it out before put it back to the phone.
After you ruled out all the other physical damages, we can begin to recover files with H Data Recovery Software.
How to recover files with H Data Software
Step 1. Safely remove your SD cards. Turn off the phone to prevent possible hardware or data damage before you take out the memory card. Plug it into a card reader.
Step 2. Connect the card reader to your computer.
Step 3. Launch H Data Recovery Software and select "Deleted Your files From Flash Disk". Click Next to perform the data scan.
Step 4. After the scan completes, H Data Recovery will list all the recoverable pictures and videos for your preview. You may then select the pictures that you need and recover them. The recovered photos will be saved to a folder on your hard drive instead of the SD card to avoid data overwriting.
I bought a new computer and almost immediately *upgraded* to Windows 10 when I got the alert, and then downloaded a bunch of photos from my phone and now I cannot open any of them, because I get "Invalid Value for Registry" errors. I need to be able to open them so I can edit and I can't even open to view! Please advise, I don't know what to do or how to fix this. I'm a novice, and I need help....
Some people may experience the Invalid Value for Registry error in Windows 10 when trying to open and view their .jpeg/.jpg/.png/.gif photos. This problem as the error suggests, has something to do with the registry. To be able to open and view photos under this circumstance, you need to fix "Invalid value for Registry" error.
Option 1. Resetting "Photos" App
This question is so common that Microsoft has added a new feature with the anniversary update so that you can reset the "Photos" app. If you are experiencing the "Invalid value for Registry" error, try to reset "Photos" app first to see if it works.
Go to Start and navigate through Settings > System > Apps&Features. Click on the app "Photos" and under Advanced options you will see the option Reset. By resetting this app, you should be able to solve the error without touching the registry.
Option 2 Fixing Registry Table Values
Step 1. Open regedit as Administrator
Step 2. In the left pane, navigate to the following registry key
\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository\Families\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_ ...
Step 3. There should be several entries for this key with different version numbers. For example:
Microsoft.Windows.Photos_15.1201.10020.0_ etc.
Step 4. Right click on each entry, go to permissions, click advanced, change owner from System to yourself. Check the version numbers and delete the outdated versions (the entries with the smaller version number). Close Registry Editor and restart your computer.
Recover Lost Photos with H Data Recovery Software
Tweaking Registry might be dangerous. In case anything goes wrong and you can find some of your photos, use trusty third party data recovery software such as H Data Recovery to help you retrieve lost photos.
Step 1. Download H Data Recovery Software and install.
Step 2. Launch H Data Recovery. Select the module for recovering lost pictures.
Step 3. Select the partition where your photos used to be and hit Next. H Data Recovery will proceed with the scanning.
Step 4. After the scan, you can select a file type to filter the files.This will help you locate your desired files more quickly. Select the files you wish to recover and choose a secure destination to save them.
You can also use Universal Recovery Module to deep scan all your partitions to hunt down every lost file. This is the feature you should use when other modules fail to locate your photos.
You can always recover any lost data with H Data Recovery. But remember to act quickly and save the recovered files to another device or partition to avoid overwriting.
What is the logic behind data recovery software to recover deleted data from memory card and hard disk?
Data recovery software can recover files from formatted hard drives, emptied recycle bins, unreadable SD cards...People may wonder how the recovery is done and why it can be done.
To understand the logic behind data recovery, let’s first take a look at what data recovery software can and cannot do. Let's take H Data Recovery Software as an example.
H Data Recovery can recover permanently deleted files; recover from quick formatted disks; recover from crash partitions; recover personal data from system reset; recover photos from unreadable camera memory cards…It can handle most of the data loss situations but there are some exceptions.
Severe physical damage to the storage media can cause permanent and unrecoverable data loss, such as scattered hard disk drive platters or burnt NAND flash memories. File data are essentially combinations of ones and zeros. These data are represented differently depending on the storage media. For HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), data are represented by magnetized and demagnetized tiny magnetic domains, while for SSDs (Solid State Drives) by the presence and absence of electrons. If the storage media is physically damaged, it means these bits of data are physically damaged. This is beyond the effort of any software.
Aside from physical damage, overwritten files can hardly be recovered either. Every data recovery specialist would recommend you to avoid writing new data into the storage device in the event of data loss. Overwriting includes using file shredding software to shred files; using drive cleaning software such as DBAN to wipe entire drives; overwriting by putting new data upon old file locations...File shredding software and drive cleaning software is designed with security in mind. The sole purpose is to eliminate the risk of security and privacy breach posed by unauthorized recovery.
Simply put, data recovery software can recover files that still exist in their original form as data but are simply inaccessible due to file system operation such as deletion or system error.
How Data Recovery Works
Data recovery software takes advantage of the mechanism of deletion. When we delete a file, the file system only removes the address pointer to that file. But the file itself as raw data is still there. The computer just marks it as “deleted, can be overwritten”. If we put new files in, the computer may notice the newly freed space and cram the new file there. By doing so, the data of the old file, which is a complex combination of ones and zeros, will be re-arranged to form the new file data. That’s why overwritten files can hardly be recovered.
The same goes to quick format. When we quick format a memory card or hard disk, the file system only clears the address table to all files. The operating system will not locate any files without their index so when you look at the hard drive you would not see any data and assume the drive is erased. In fact, the files as raw data are still there but they are no longer exist as files. They are hidden from users and will be freely overwritten.
Why won't the system just truly delete them right away? As mentioned above, to permanently remove a file requires the file to be overwritten. That means each time you delete a file, the system will overwrite the file with zeros or ones. This is time-consuming and inefficient.
As long as your lost files are not overwritten or physically destroyed, professional data recovery software such as H Data Recovery will be sufficient to scan, search and reconstitute these files and restore them.
Above is the basic logic behind data recovery software. There are many different scenarios where you would unfortunately lose data. Select your solution accordingly and with caution. The best precaution, of course, would be the good habit of backing up your important data and store them safely away.
People lose data at some point in their lives. The amount of data stored on personal hard drives and corporate servers continues to grow. And so is the risk of data loss. But not everyone is very conscious of the importance of keeping a regular backup of important files. An unexpected hardware failure, a virus attack, or even an inadvertent click could send your most valuable files to oblivion.
To create backups is not difficult or confusing as one may assume. In fact, Windows offers various backup tools to counter the data-loss risk. We have covered a few of them in previous articles. These tools include File History, OneDrive, Recover Drive and System Image. System Image is the tool to go to if you want to back up your whole system and personal files at a particular state. It is always good to know that you have a reliable duplicate safely stored away when your Windows system is in dire situations.
How to Restore System Image Backups
Depending on whether or not you can boot into your Window 10, there are different ways to restore system image backups.
1. If you can still boot into Windows 10, navigate to Start > Settings > Update & security. Select Recovery in the left pane and then select Restart now.
2. If your system won't start, you will need a Recovery Drive or System repair disc to help you boot into the recovery menu. If you use a system repair disc, insert it into the optical drive and boot. If you use a Recovery Drive, insert it into the USB port and boot. (How to create Recovery Drive in Windows 10)
If your computer keeps skipping these bootable media and still tries to load the corrupted system, press F2 (may vary in different machines) to adjust the boot order.
Either way, once you are in the boot option menu, click Troubleshoot > System Image Recovery. Make sure your external hard disk where the system image is located is connected and turned on. System Image will select the latest system image, if you would rather restore another image, select the Select a system image and click Next and follow the instructions to proceed with the rest of the process.
How to Restore Files without Backups
Because not everyone has a copy of every file sitting around, what if we have no backups to fall back on? Can we still recover data? As long as the data loss is not caused by severe physical damage, we can mostly recover data with professional data recovery software.
H Data Recovery software is one of the best recovery software out there. It features 6 main data scan modules, each of which design to tackle different data loss situations such as deletion, formatting, crashed partitions, emptied recycle bin and USB flash drive problems. Restore your personal data after system reset, system crash or hard drive formatting, even you don't have any backups is no longer a mission impossible! H Data Recovery Software implements unique algorithms to deep scan and reconstitute missing data and restore them to your local drives with efficiency and clarity.
Can Magneto Erase Hard Drives?
Let's first take a look at how hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) works differently.
HDD stores date on its magnetic platter surface, which is divided into billions of tiny magnetic domains. Each domain can be independently magnetized (1) or demagnetized (0). With binary system, we can store all kinds of data on the HDD.
For magnetic storage like hard disk drives, VHS tapes, or cassettes, Magneto can use his basic power to control magnetism, changing the magnetic domains into random patterns, rendering the data stored within those domains unreadable. This process is called degaussing.
But SSDs (Solid State Drives) are not magnetic storage, they cannot be degaussed. What will Magneto do?
SSD uses flash memories or DRAMs to store ones and zeros. Most SSD manufacturers choose NAND flash memory over DRAM because NAND is non-volatile, which means data will still be stored in NAND even the power is cut off.
Flash memory works by charging or removing electrons in floating gate transistor cells to represent 0 and 1.
If the floating gate is not charged(neutral), a positive charge in the control gate creates a channel in the p-substrate that carries a current from source to drain. If the floating gate is negatively charged, then this charge blocks the current between source and drain. By sensing the current flow, the computer will read 1; otherwise, it will read 0. The floating gate is completely surrounded by an isolation layer. This enables the floating gate transistor to be used as non-volatile memory, but also imposes the need to find ways to charge or discharge it.
When we say “erase” an SSD, we actually mean “resetting” it. We reset the electrons to remove the charge from the floating gates, resetting the flash memory contents to 1. By varying the magnetic fields (according to Faraday's law of induction), Magneto can create electricity flushing the electrons, thereby resetting the SSDs.
