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whitewings
Asked: 2014-07-02 16:29:59 +0800 CST

Recover File Deleted on Encrypted Hard Drive?

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When I installed Linux I chose to encrypt my hard drive, including the home folder. If I delete a file in the normal fashion (not securely deleting it with overwrites) will it not be recoverable by virtue of being on an encrypted drive?

data-recovery

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you can recover a drive from a filesystem of an unencrypted drive you should also be able to recover the file under the same circumstances from an encrypted drive, given that you can still mount the filesystem on the encrypted drive. Simply speaking, there should be no difference. The key here is that the filesystem on top still works as designed, no matter how the underlying storage blocks are organized and encrypted or not.

    If you use filesystem encryption like ecryptfs instead of whole drive encryption, you have encrypted files on a filesystem of an unencrypted disk, so this would be exactly the same as without encryption, just the content of the file and its size is different.

    If you use SSDs remember that there exists things like TRIM.

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