"Millions of Deleted Files Recovered in Hard Drives Purchased Online"

Secure Data Recovery shared the results of a data recovery project aimed at determining how many files could be recovered from hard drives purchased online. The company purchased 100 hard drives at random and used reasonable means to attempt data recovery. Secure Data Recovery was able to recover data from 35 drives, 34 of which were sanitized, 30 were damaged, and only one was encrypted. Over 5.7 million files were recovered, although that number was skewed by a single hard drive containing more than 3.1 million files. The findings emphasize a major problem among most users. After replacing damaged or obsolete hard drives, most users lack a thorough destruction or disposal plan. This article continues to discuss the recovery of millions of files from hard drives purchased online, users not properly destroying or disposing of damaged or obsolete hard drives, and how to securely dispose of a hard drive. 

TechRadar reports "Millions of Deleted Files Recovered in Hard Drives Purchased Online"