Hard Drive Storage

[MickeyTheBrick]

I don't know much about computers, so if you are giving an answer to this, please give your reply as if giving it to a five year old.
If it's possible for all deleted data to be retrieved from a hard drive, why is it not used as a limitless storage device?

[ChuckFickens]

It's not possible for all deleted data to be retrieved.

In simple terms, it's retrievable until the area of the hard drive it was stored on is overwritten by other data.

[VHG]

Data is stored on a hard drive, and a "look up" list is kept on the drive to "point" to each file.

When you delete a file from a hard disk it is only the entry in the "look up" list that is deleted, the file on the hard drive stays there (but is marked as deletable).

This is why SOME files can be recovered even after deletion.

However as other files use the hard disk they will overwrite these deleted files, so as Chuck says, you can only recover a file until another file is stored in its place.

Note: It is possible for the police and other agencies to retrieve information that HAS been deleted from a hard disk. I dont know how they do it, but they do need very specialized equipment.