About Disk Drive Erase

Disk Erase Basics

In this section, we try to give you some basic information about the different types of disk erase that you may encounter.

The first concept to understand is what happens when you delete a file on your computer .  Below is a very simplified concept diagram of how data is stored on a device.  Notice that the PC maintains what is essentially a list of files and where those files are stored on the disk.  The files themselves are stored elsewhere on the disk.

When you delete a file, using your operating system, it does not actually delete the data file itself. Instead, the system deletes the information from the file list so that the system no longer knows where the deleted file resides.  This is represented in the diagram below.

As you can see in the diagram, the files and their contents are actually intact after the delete command is executed and many programs exist that can restore that data.  This is why SurErase is so important to prevent identity theft and the loss of valuable data.

But What About Formatting the Drive?

Formatting a drive is no more comprehensive than deleting each file individually.  Essentially, a format performs a mass delete, so just as the previous diagram represents, all of the files and their data remain intact on the hard drive.