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I may have accidently erased some pictures using webroot secure erase. How can i see what erased

  • May 28, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 63 views

Hi.  I may have accidently erased some pictures using webroot secure erase.  I have it set on the lowest setting.  How can I retrieve or at least see what I erased?

3 replies

nic
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  • Retired Webrooter
  • May 28, 2015
I'm sorry to say that secure erase isn't reversible.  On the lowest setting it still overwrites the data three times, which mean that the data is gone for good.  Do you have backups of those pictures somewhere?

  • Author
  • Fresh Face
  • May 28, 2015
I have backed up on my external hard drive, so maybe.  I just wished I knew what I erased.  You see I  had a document checked for removal.  However, after I siad delete, the document was still there.  So, first, I'm not sure why it didn't delete because it was checked.  Secondly, I am assuming something elase erased in its placed that might have been checked by accident.  I just wih I could at least see the number of items erased by bringing up a report or something.  That may give me a better idea.
 

nic
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  • Retired Webrooter
  • May 29, 2015
It doesn't look like there's a record of what was removed.  I did double-check and the loweset setting of secure erase doesn't do a data overwrite, so standard file recovery tools might be able to tell you what got erased in that directory, and allow you to recover them.  It isn't until the medium setting that it does the 3 data passes.
 
The other thought I had, to figure out what if anything was deleted, would be to output the contents of the directory listing from the directory on your computer that you were in, and compare that with the same on the backup drive.  Use a tool like diff and it will show you if there are any files missing:
https://www.diffchecker.com/