Posted on 03/09/2015 3:54:47 PM PDT by ken5050
I know there are a great many highly tech savvy FReepers out there. I'm a Luddite...turn it on, turn it off, that's it....but I'm puzzled about one aspect of the story about Hillary's server..everything I've read says she can delete anything and everything she wants..and we may never know what was there. I always thought that it's out there somewhere, and can be recovered..though with difficulty..
Thanks...
Yes, unless the physical disk was destroyed. EMP could ruin it too.
What is commonly deletion is really the computer temporarily making the data inaccessible, and allowed to essentially record over the original data.
It seems pretty obvious that you just hit the server HD with a hammer and poof!
Need to destroy drives and backup.
if stuff is written over....the data thats being “deleted” then its gone.
if one merely “deletes” data”...it;s simply not listed in any directories ..as I understand it.
If she had her own server, it is just like your own pc, you can certainly delete unwanted items off of it.
Unless it has been physically destroyed, programs such as EnCase can be used to find what has been deleted.
Unless the disc is torched, you can reformat the data.
On a computer thee is always the hard drive. What about a server?
As with most things computer-related, it depends.
In general, certainly you could wipe out the data drives of a server (I assume you mean something like a mail or hosting server) but there are multiple ways to get the data back:
1) Easy — any server hosting anyone will have frequent backups (if not continuous on a separate physically distant “mirror” site). It is not that expensive and can setup when the server is deployed.
2) Assuming the server is not using some sort of back up (shame on the server owner/admins!), data recovery companies can restore pretty much anything even if logically “erased.”
The only way to be 100% sure the data are not on a drive is to physically remove it and grind it with a grinding wheel.
Is this related to hitelry’s lost emails?
>>On a computer thee is always the hard drive. What about a server?<<
Yes — any computer bigger than a tablet need disk storage.
Server are generally pretty large.
Short answer: yes.
The longer answer can be as complicated as you want (but I figure you don’t want all the details). Servers that are part of the government are routinely backed up and nothing much gets deleted without several people confirming “do delete”.
Since the hildebeast’s email sat on her own personal server she was the authority figure for what got retained and what got deleted. She probably delegated that duty to someone else so that she would have “plausible deniability”.
The short answer is yes, so long as the email was never mailed. Once you click send it’s not just on your server anymore.
It can also be encrypted in such a way that it can not be read. Many people say this is not so, but it is...
There is a utility called fileshredder that doesn’t just remove it from the master file table, it does a bitwise overwrite on the drive with garbage.
So yes - things can be permanently deleted with relative ease.
A "Server" is nothing special - it's just a (high end) computer.
But it has "Server" software installed and uses a "Server" operating system, and it will generally be outfitted with a LOT of hard drive storage.
The mechanics of overwriting the drives to destroy data is no different from that used on a desktop machine.
There's always the hard-drive shredder.
Even if you torch your hard drive and stop paying your iCloud/Carbonite/Dropbox bills, you can always count on NSA to have your back as they log all your keystrokes.
Thanks. I wasn’t that far off in my mind.
I’m not an IT expert, but it seems to me if we’re talking emails then the it might be possible to doctor the contents that are stored on the server, but the very nature of email means that it was transmitted from or to other computers and there is going to be an electronic trail left along the way.
bfl
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