Making deleted files irretrievable

[zqwerty]

HDD's are not the same as SSD's when it comes to recovering data from an erased, formatted drive etc.

An HDD does not write the new data back in exactly the same path on the magnetic material as the last time it went through the same area, there is fringing, so to speak, this makes "erased" data recoverable with great effort and expense no matter what is done to erase it, by adjusting the head to scan either side of the last pass.

This method is not available for SSD's since they don't work in that way being solid state devices and not spinning magnetic disks. Erasing an SSD by overwriting will erase the memory and make it unrecoverable.

I read about this a while ago so I am probably a little hazy on the detail but essentially correct.

[Misty]

Many thanks Ofthesea, such a simple, yet brilliant idea. I only need about 85 Gigs, so have already started the process of copying a small part of my photos, non of the award winning ones, which I will later delete.