When using the FORMAT command, Windows displays a message like this:
Important: Formatting a disk removes all information from the disk.
The FORMAT utility actually creates new FAT and ROOT tables, leaving all
previous data on the disk untouched. Moreover, an image of the replaced FAT
and ROOT tables are stored, so that the UNFORMAT command can be used to
restore them. FDISK merely cleans the Partition Table (located in the drive's
first sector) and does not touch anything else.
1.2. Advanced Data Recovery Systems
Advances in data recovery have been made such that data can be reclaimed
in many cases from hard drives that have been wiped and disassembled. Security
agencies use advanced applications to find cybercrime-related evidence. Also
there are established industrial spy agencies adopting sophisticated channel
coding techniques such as Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML), a
technique used to reconstruct the data on magnetic disks. Other methods
include the use of magnetic force microscopy and recovery of data based on
patterns in erase bands.
Although there are very sophisticated data recovery systems available at a
high price, data can easily be restored with the help of an off-the-shelf
data recovery utility like Active@ File Recovery (www.file-recovery.net)
or Active@ UNERASER (www.uneraser.com), making your erased confidential
data quite accessible.
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