In order to use this information, investigators must be able to locate and recover it. Computers have been compared to filing cabinets, and this is true in a general sense. In some cases, it could be a hard drive on someone elses computer. Both the computer and the filing cabinet allow the user to add and remove information as he or she chooses, and both have a finite amount of space to store this information. This is where the similarity ends.
Computers use a hierarchical structure of folders or subdirectories to store files.
If a file is removed from a filing cabinet, it is really gone, but DOS or Windows 95 delete commands do not actually eliminate any of the data in a file that is deleted. Rather, that portion of memory on the hard drive is marked available, and the space can be written over if needed. For instance, word processing programs routinely store backup files of the document that is currently being worked on. System programs routinely use portions of files currently in use to fill in blank or dead spots at the end of saved files. The easiest way to hide a file is to disguise it.