Timeline for Is the message "Data cannot be recovered." when reformatting misleading to users?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
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| May 25, 2016 at 13:47 | comment | added | Dan Henderson |
Instead of special software I'd suggest specialized tools as there may exist hardware methods for data recovery also (in fact, hardware methods are oftentimes even better at recovering deleted data than software is).
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| May 19, 2016 at 8:20 | comment | added | Oddthinking |
unavailable to the operating system - what's an operating system? Can we remove that jargon?
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| May 19, 2016 at 7:44 | comment | added | Navin |
all data will be inaccessible sounds a lot better than the original.
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| May 18, 2016 at 14:17 | comment | added | Mark Stewart |
OK, how about a brief message, and two buttons: Details and Shoot myself in the foot
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| May 18, 2016 at 13:34 | comment | added | supercat | @AnthonyGrist: While I don't think the analogy would be good in a prompt, I'd view reformatting in such a case as analogous to tossing an object made of a robust material from a ship into the ocean. The object may or may not continue to exist for any particular length of time, and likely would never been seen again, but could potentially pop up unexpectedly. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 12:11 | comment | added | Anthony Grist | I don't think "inaccessible" will necessarily have the implication that you think it will for non-tech savvy users. "Inaccessible" just means it can't be accessed, it doesn't imply anything about why it can't be accessed. I see it as no different to "cannot be recovered" in terms of not making the actual situation clear. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 9:09 | comment | added | Fiksdal | @supercat That's a great suggestion, you can post it as an answer! | |
| May 18, 2016 at 5:07 | comment | added | supercat | @MarkStewart: Seems a little wordy. I think "Data will likely be unrecoverable" would suffice. While some people might take "likely" to mean "over 50% chance", and while the probability of rendering data completely unrecoverable would be less than that, I don't think anyone who would be dissatisfied with a 50% chance of real destruction would be satisfied with anything less than 90%, and the adverb "likely" does not imply anything near that. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 2:38 | comment | added | Fiksdal | @MarkStewart I love this one. I think your should post it as an answer. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 2:23 | history | edited | InkyDigits | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 318 characters in body
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| May 17, 2016 at 19:52 | comment | added | InkyDigits | @MarkStewart may I plagiarize, at least in part. It's getting wordy but suits the original question and subsequent concerns well | |
| May 17, 2016 at 19:50 | comment | added | InkyDigits | @J... really, really good points. I'll see about editing the answer a little taking that into account. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 19:44 | comment | added | Mark Stewart |
How about Formatting SD card will make all current data on the *SD card* unavailable to the operating system. Data cannot *generally* be recovered; using special software *may recover some* data. Continue?
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| May 17, 2016 at 19:36 | comment | added | J... |
...cannot be recovered without using special software - this gives the impression that there should be some expectation that data recovery is possible. In reality, the probability of data recovery following a format operation is undefined. An appropriate message should not give the user any impression otherwise. The expectation of data recovery should be zero following a format. The expectation of data elimination following a format should also be zero.
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| May 17, 2016 at 19:24 | history | edited | InkyDigits | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
thinking gave me time to improve the answer, left all the old bits in too
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| May 17, 2016 at 16:53 | vote | accept | Fiksdal | ||
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| May 17, 2016 at 16:53 | comment | added | Fiksdal | Haha.. Yeah, we might as well put a whole lecture into the warning :) | |
| May 17, 2016 at 16:44 | comment | added | InkyDigits | @Fiksdal I didn't consider that. It's a valid concern if we're talking about pushing for a paradigm shift on this type of warning. I feel it is a little out of context to the OP's concern which is about not misleading the user to believe that his data is truly gone and not about warning him that it may only be partially recoverable. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 16:29 | comment | added | Fiksdal | 1+, I like the suggested message also. But can we make it slightly more alarming? Like adding "partly recover" or something? Don't know how to phrase it. (You know, since the OS may immediately overwrite some of the sectors. Also, if it's a fragmented filesystem, I think formatting may overwrite the index, which will lead to many fragmented and/or corrupted files, even if immediately attempting recovery. I actually experienced this recently when a friend of mine accidentally formatted a FAT32 volume.) | |
| May 17, 2016 at 16:13 | vote | accept | Fiksdal | ||
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| May 17, 2016 at 15:51 | review | First posts | |||
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| May 17, 2016 at 15:47 | history | answered | InkyDigits | CC BY-SA 3.0 |