i thaught it had because i have formatted the hard drive and it is empty

nah, the way a hard drive works is like a set of draws used for storing screws ... etc (you see this when you use an old school defrag tool on the hard drive)

Example -


Your hard drive will store the data from the beginning of the disk, and continue adding to the disk as time goes on, and all the info is soted in a little file that tells your PC where each piece of data is stored for its reference.

But if your format the disk, it delete this file, so your data (i.e. mp3's, docs's ... etc) are still there, but the file doesn't know where they are.

So by using something like file scavenger it looks through all the clusters of the hard drive to see if there is any data written to it, and some pieces of software can re-write the file table so that you can see all your data again.


Regards
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Meck

kool thats gr8 but 1 thing i dont understand is if it is still there, why isnt it using any space on the HD?

Because the FAT (File Allocation Table(s) (there's two copies)) are saying the space is free. Think of the FAT as an index file. It tells the system what sectors/clusters are holding the file. When you delete a file, the FAT is updated, now telling the system that those sectors/clusters are now available to write data to. Until something else occupies those areas, the file data is still there. The recovery programs mentioned ignore the FAT(s), and search the disk platter areas directly for any data.

Originally Posted by Dan Penny

Because the FAT (File Allocation Table(s) (there's two copies)) are saying the space is free. Think of the FAT as an index file. It tells the system what sectors/clusters are holding the file. When you delete a file, the FAT is updated, now telling the system that those sectors/clusters are now available to write data to. Until something else occupies those areas, the file data is still there. The recovery programs mentioned ignore the FAT(s), and search the disk platter areas directly for any data.

Now why couldn't I put it like that? lol. Cheers for the perfect explaination


Regards
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Meck

No problem. That's what we're all here for. ;>)