An easy thing to do. And we do see rather a lot of it.
Fairly common is restoring data to a folder in which newer data resides. An IT admin has been asked to provide archived data containing information required by someone else in the company. Remarkably well-organised, he locates the tape and performs the restore – but neglects to change the destination. It generally is a “partial” data overwrite, because most of the time the user realises what he’s done within a minute or two, panics, and switches everything off at the wall socket (in this case, the best thing to do.)
Overwritten data cannot be recovered. Sure, there are companies boasting of various technologies that will be able to do this; but they have been making these claims for many years, and we are not a single step closer to seeing any evidence.
Partially-overwritten data means overwritten data, which means unrecoverable data.
