Does disk clone & subsequent recovery include deleted files.
Acronis True Image Home 11.
If I restore a disk clone does it include files that were originally deleted.
I am assuming it copies every bit of hard disk byte for byte.
I have just put quite a lot of sensitive data on my new install of Windows 8 on a SSD.
I have just discovered that you cannot secure delete individual files on a SSD, like on a normal HDD with multiple writes.
I do no want to re-install Windows again & wondered if I could clone it with True Image.
Delete the sensitive files then clone the SSD.
Wipe the whole SSD (Which I believe can be done with special software/instructions)
Then recover the cloned copy.
My worry is I think it is byte for byte copy & probably copy everything back that could then be recovered.
It is not really that sensitive or that important but would be nice to know it can be done if required.
Thanks I/A.
Don't use Clone. Do a full disk Backup, selecting the entire disk, and a Restore. The end result will be the same as Clone, but with many advantages.
Yes, a full disk mode backup would include everything, including boot files. Yes, it is reliable. In fact, given the risk of doing something wrong and having a catastrophic failure when cloning, backup is much safer.
If you restore a backup image, it will include everything that was present at the time the image was made. So yes, if you deleted some files later from your system, they would still be present in the backup image since they were not deleted at the time the image was made.
There is a process you may follow to resize partitions when restoring to a larger or smaller drive.
Hi,
Many thanks for the info ref Full Disk backup instead of clone.
Regarding recovering a deleted file I did not make myself very clear.
I intend deleting the files before making the the full disk mode backup.
What I was wondering is because the files are not actually physically removed from a SSD (& no way of doing so)
When the backup is recovered, is the deleted data also brought back, that any good undelete software would be able to find.
I am guessing it is, not being a file by file copy and just blocks of data.
Bignose,
The Acronis Clone utility does have a resize feature in the Manual mode and Manual move method which is user size controlled. Whether is will actually clone to smaller does vary from situation to situation. A lot depends upon how much used space on old disk and how large its replacement is. You only answer will be a trial attempt which can be done. It is practice as long as you click the CANCEL button and do NOT click the PROCEED option. The last summary page will show how how the target disk will be resized.
All of this should be done when booted from the TI Recovery CD.
Bignose:
To answer your question, unless you select "Sector-By-Sector" mode, True Image will only back up in-use sectors. This backup will not include deleted files because they are in unused sectors.
This isn't perfect, however. When a file is written to the disk it overwrites unused sectors that may have formerly contained parts of deleted files. So there's a chance that the last sector of a new file that's being written to the disk doesn't completely fill the sector, so a few bytes from the old file may remain at the end of the sector beyond the end-of-file.
To completely obliterate all traces of old files would require zeroing each sector before writing to it. So the process probably wouldn't satisfy DOD specs but if the data isn't that sensitive it's probably good enough.
*Edit* But doesn't an SSD first write zeros to each memory cell before writing data? So if your source disk is an SSD there shouldn't be anything but zeros beyond the end-of-file, correct?
Bignose,
your procedure is right:
- delete unwanted files from your SSD, empty you trash,
- do a full disk and partition backup of all the partitions on your SSD,
- use a ATA-secure erase boot CD to wipe the data on your SSD (look secure-erase for the manufacturer of your SSD)
- restore your image using the recovery CD.