>Date:    Wed, 6 May 1998 18:59:33 -0400
>From:    Harvey Rose <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: HDD - recovery of files
>
>If a hard drive is partitioned in two or more drives and files are deleted
>on the one drive, can anyone tell me if the one drive is not written to
>(the deleted files drive), but the other drives are written to, will this
>trash the deleted files completly? ie. over write the deleted files space.

Harvey, you have not told us WHY you want to know whether writing
to one drive letter can trash (deleted) files on another drive.

I can't tell if this is
A. an abstract inquiry into the arcana of operating systems
B. a security issue
C. a plea for help from a soul in torment
but it is logical to answer all three.

***A. an abstract inquiry into the arcana of operating systems

I hope you are not confusing partitions with
logical drives or compressed drives.

As I understand it:
* partitions are separate at the BIOS level
* a primary partition supports only 1 DOS drive letter
* an extended partition may support several DOS drive letters
* DOS file level activity (such as COPY or DELETE) in
  drive letters hosted on a primary or secondary partition
   CANNOT affect
  other drive letters hosted on a primary or secondary partition
BUT
* a compressed drive is hosted in a file (usually hidden)
    - ON ANOTHER DOS DRIVE LETTER -
* since the drive is compressed, minor amounts of damage to that
  host file can have drastic effects on the compressed drive
  and of course
* deleting the host file (on one drive letter)
  will delete all the data on the compressed drive
  (on a different drive letter) but produce error messages
  because the drive is corrupt.

***B. a security issue

If it's for confidentiality
(you want to be sure the deleted files cannot be recovered)
you should use a security delete utility ON THE ORIGINAL FILES
that overwrites the physical storage space
before releasing it back to DOS.
Just to be sure, you should fill all space on the affected
drive with dummy data. (And if you use Win95,
you did empty the Recycle Bin first, didn't you?)
A friend of mine has a batch command that copies the contents
of the MS-DOS directory repeatedly to fill the disk.

***C. a plea for help from a soul in torment

If it's because you wish you _hadn't_ deleted those files then
either
 you haven't corrupted a compressed drive host file and
   normal file undelete procedures should apply
   (if undeleting files can be considered normal:
    use the backups, that's what I say ;-))
   - if you haven't written to the drive they are on
   they should be retrievable
or
 you _have_ corrupted a compressed drive host file
   and the following 'error message haiku' apply, sorry.

 Three things are certain:
 Death, taxes, and lost data.
 Guess which has occurred.

 Everything is gone;
 Your life's work has been destroyed.
 Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

Len Warner <[log in to unmask]> WWW Pager http://wwp.mirabilis.com/10120933