R&D: Factors Affecting Persistence of Deleted Files on Digital Storage Devices

Springer  has published, in Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems book series, an article written by Tahir M. Khan, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA, James H. Jones Jr., George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, and Alex V. Mbazirra, Marymount University, Arlington, VA, USA.

Abstract: “There is limited research addressing the factors that contribute to the persistence of deleted file contents on digital storage devices. This study presents a digital file persistence methodology applied to study the persistence of deleted files on magnetic disk drives, although the methodology could be applied to other media types as well.“

“The experiments consisted of tracking approximately 1900 deleted files under combinations of different factors over 324 distinct experimental runs. The findings show that the persistence of deleted files depends on several factors, including the number and size of new files written to a disk by the operating system, disk-free space combined with disk fragmentation, and file type. Future work will apply this methodology to broader factors, including other devices and circumstances.“