I heard many rumors saying that some experts could actually recover overwritten files. Is that true? If not can someone explain a bit or post an external link to a similar topic please?

No it's not possible. It's based on a flawed theory by a man named Peter Guttmann who claimed that using MFM it would be possible. But, it's been proven wrong a thousand times.

This article explains more: http://www.data-medics.com/is-data-ever ... -gone.html

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Time machine.
If a time machine were to be created then it would be possible.
Not possible with the current technology unless the data is not over-written, like recovering sectors placed on G-list.
Regards.

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Are you sure? I thought this was one of the features of HDDRegenerator and SpinRite.

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Luke
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Ohh I'm certainly certain.


In the old days of low density drives, 10MB, with band positioners, there was slack and sometimes the head never fully erased a track. It was those remnants that the experts retrieved.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

When I try to recover a file that I've overwritten, recuva says it's recoverable and it's green. When I recover it (it's a pass protected rar file), I can't open it. Says file is damaged. Is there a way around that?

The only known way to get arround that at the moment is to copy the file that you over-writen back to the drive from your backup copy.

If it's over-written you can't recover it any longer from the original drive where the file was. You will only recover the data that is now present on the same sectors the old file used to be. That data will be retrieved by recuva and wouldn't be on any use.

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Could you explain that part a bit further? Some of the files were on a flash drive, others were on the hard disk. I've done an overwrite on both quite some time ago. I don't have backups but I need the files again.

If you have over-written the original files and you don't have a backup then they are gone ... And you can't recover them. Sorry.

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Okay thanks. Thought there was a workaround. I'm sure there is but it's too complicated.

There isn't.

If the data is indeed over-written, there is NO workaround.

It's like the place where your data used to be now is filled with he new data.

You can't have 2 things on the same space at the same time.

No-One will be able to recover the over-written data except with tech that we still don't have, like a time machine to go back in time to the moment when you still had your data.

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