Recovering Deleted or Hidden Information
Deleted data rarely disappears completely
When a user deletes a file, on most file systems what actually happens is that the space it occupied is marked as available for rewriting, but the content physically remains on the disk until other data overwrites it, sometimes for months. Forensic recovery takes advantage of precisely that window to reconstruct deleted files from unallocated space, residual metadata fragments or file carving techniques that identify known structures of common formats within seemingly random data. Hidden information poses a different challenge: steganography techniques, hidden partitions or alternate data streams on NTFS systems can conceal content so that conventional file browsing tools don't even detect it. In investigations of financial crimes or data leaks, finding the file someone deliberately tried to delete is often the piece that turns a suspicion into conclusive proof.