subject: The Difference Between Replacing And Overwriting [print this page] 'If you replace a photo, not even a Photo Recovery Software can help you cannot get back the original photo!'
This is a common misconception. People often tend to think that just because you have replaced a file, the earlier data gets 'overwritten'. The fact, that once any data is overwritten, it cannot be recovered, is true, but the notion that overwriting and replacing are the same is not. In order to understand why a file is not recoverable after it is overwritten, we need to first know how and where a file is stored on the computer system.
The hard disk of any storage device is a complex structure. It has many sub-components, probably the most important of them all is the platter. It is a magnetic device where all the information from the system is stored. The platter is made up of sectors which are 512 bytes in size. These sectors are what is ultimately used to store data. So when you save a photo, it gets saved in one or more sectors on the hard disk of the storage device.
Every storage device has a limited number of sectors, and when they are all used, the memory of the system is said to be full. Thereafter, it starts writing data over the already used sectors. This is when overwriting happens. Sometimes, although rarely, this also happens when the memory is not full.
Every time you save a picture on the system, it is stored in a new location. When you delete an image from the computer or storage device, the file is only marked as deleted. The device then has the freedom of reusing that space for storing some other file. If another file is stored in place of the deleted file, it gets overwritten. This is another way in which files are overwritten, after which no Photo Recovery Software can recover them.
However, when a file is edited and then saved, it never gets overwritten in the file system. In such cases you still have a ray of hope left. The newly saved file could easily have been saved to another location (sector) on the file system and left the old file intact for Photo Recovery Software to Recover Lost Photos. These tools can scan the system and recover the old pictures.
Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery Software is one such recovery tool which can Recover Lost Photos from both Windows and Mac OS. The software supports all the popular file types; JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, AVI, MOV, etc. It also has a simple and easy-to-understand Graphical User Interface (GUI) that enables even those unfamiliar with gadgets and technology to recover data with ease.
