Delete Only Means Forget

When you click “delete”, the word leads you to believe that the information will be lost forever. But that is incorrect. The computer does not delete the information, it simply forgets where the information is on the hard drive. The information is still there, but the operating system such as Windows, does not know where it is and cannot retrieve the deleted file.

It seems sort of deceptive that you can “delete” a personal or business file and it still be retrievable by an expert. After all, this can be a serious problem in corporate espionage.  (We will talk more about that later).

Volatile vs. Non-Volatile Memory

For all of you technical people out there, I thought you may want a brief explanation. Your computer has two types of memory, volatile and non-volatile. Volatile memory is called RAM. It stores information briefly for the operation of certain software like Internet Explorer.

Non-volatile memory is stored on your hard drive using a series of magnets. Depending on the magnets position, it represents “1″ or “0″. The computer is able to interpret this information. When you delete a file, it simply “loses” the location of that file in the hard drive.

A Computer Private Detective

A computer private investigator can read all of the information located on the hard drive, even though the marker for it has been lost. So that means every email, file, internet browsing history and picture that was on the hard drive may still be there. Sometimes it will get written over when a new file is created.

Hiring a computer private detective to conduct computer forensics is a great way to find out what your significant other has been up to on the computer or their cell phone.

Check back soon for our second post.