"Jim Wilkins" fired this volley in news:lc5peu$o8l
:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...

Actually -- thermal variations may cause the heads to be offset
a fraction of a track width from one time to the other, and with the
right tools (and a disassembled drive) it is possible to recover
data
from the fringes like that.

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

http://hddscan.com/doc/data-recovery-for-dummies.html





Yep, I'd forgotten about the 'sidebars'. There are some drives that pre-
erase the sides before re-writing the data track... but not all.

Lloyd