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Why can't recovery software get the emails?

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by leibendk

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Correct me if I'm wrong. But I heard from a very respected person in the IT Dept. where I work that a hard drive can have half a dozen images, but data can still be recovered from the original image. That is why old hard drives are removed and SHREDDED into bits of metal where I work.
Tapes are magnetic media too. So why isn't anyone saying let's recover the emails? Have I been under a misconception that a formatted or reimaged hard drive can't have earlier images accessed? Thanks very much for any citations of SOURCES on this issue.
Kermit Leibensperger

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by seanferd

Very expensive to do this for hard drives after the data has been written over or re-formatted more than once. The NSA can do this for investigative purposes. Sometimes commercial data recovery experts can recover from a damaged drive, but generally not from a wiped drive.

Tape is a whole other ballgame. You can't just undelete it. Again, maybe serious forensic experts could do this, but would be highly expensive.

Your average IT department can't recover any of this.

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