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DOES A USB STICK OR SD CARD STORE ANY DATA FROM ITEMS THAT HAVE BEEN ERASED?

- Clare Leahy

There’s a common misconcept­ion that once data is deleted from a USB stick, SD card or even your computer’s hard disk, it’s gone forever. When something is deleted, either from your hard drive or a USB flash stick or secure digital (SD) card, it’s unlikely that the file has been erased. What is usually erased is the pathway, or link, which your computer uses to identify the location of the particular file. There are many software recovery solutions which enable you to bring files ‘back from the dead’. Most files are stored as a series of zeroes and ones, and although sometimes parts of files can become corrupted or disappear forever, the chances are that if you hit delete by accident, it’s not necessaril­y time to panic just yet.

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