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Computers have their own logic and their
own way of doing things. They don't think, and they don't
figure things out. And they don't speak in a language that
we understand. In order for us to interact with the computer,
we use an interface. More specifically, we are given a Graphical
User Interface, or GUI (pronounced, "gooey") with which
to control the computer.
This allows us to see a representation
of what goes on inside the computer in a way that makes
sense to us (some of the time!). It also means that the
inner workings of computers are actually hidden from us!
As it turns out, in order for computers to be fast, they
are internally very messy because they just put things in
the closest possible spot, and then keep track of where
to find them.
In the normal course of operation, computers
sometimes lose track of where some of the pieces of files,
documents, and applications are. This is one of the reasons
why anyone who uses a computer also eventually experiences
a (or many a) computer "crash", when it just stops working
right, or at all.
This is one of the reasons why documents
disappear, or get lost. This is one of the reasons why we
founded one of the very first data recovery companies and
why we have worked on the recovery of some 10,000 computers,
disk drives, and media.
But documents don't always disappear
by accident. That is one of the reasons why we perform electronic
discovery, computer forensics. And because computers are
messy, and fast, when a document is erased, it usually isn't
erased at all. It's just made invisible to the GUI.
Even when a savvy computer user uses
a special program to try to wipe out all vestiges of data,
there is almost always something else lurking about.
And we are nearly always able to find
the data, or a trace of it.
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