I had an old external drive on the desk, ready to list online. Formatted, wiped, empty — I'd checked it in Finder myself. Then I thought, hang on, I review data recovery software for a living, I should probably scan the thing before a stranger owns it. So I did. And within a few seconds I was looking at old project folders, photos I'd completely forgotten about, contracts and exported PDFs — all sitting on a drive I was about to hand to someone off a marketplace. That was the moment I stopped and thought: we need to talk about data privacy again.

Today we're putting Wondershare Recoverit up against the biggest myth in storage — that formatting a drive means your data is gone. I'll show you exactly what came off my own formatted drive, what I found on a used hard drive and USB stick I bought second-hand online, and how I now prep any drive before I sell, donate or bin it. This is part one of a three-part series, all tested here on the Gold Coast.

▶Watch the Full Test

01What Is Wondershare Recoverit?

Recoverit is data recovery software for Mac and Windows. It scans hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards and memory drives — all the usual suspects — looking for files that have been deleted, lost, or left behind after a format. I've used it across a few videos over the years, and the thing that makes it useful for today's test is that you can download it and run a full scan for free. You only jump onto a plan when you actually want to pull the files back off, or use the advanced tools.

That free scan is the whole reason this works as an experiment. You don't have to spend anything to find out whether your "empty" drive is actually empty — and that's an exercise I reckon everyone should run once.

02Test One: My Own Formatted Drive

The drive in question was a portable hard drive I'd used for B-roll, thumbnails and client projects. Bit of everything, basically. And I did what most people do — right click, format, new file system, job done. Opened it in Finder afterwards and it was completely empty. If I'd handed it over at that point, it would have looked clean and safe to anybody.

Then I opened Recoverit, selected the external drive, and hit scan. Files started popping up within seconds. Old project folders. Video clips. Photos I'd genuinely forgotten existed. Contracts. Exported PDFs. Stuff I would never intentionally give a random buyer — sitting there on a drive the operating system was telling me was blank.

03Why Formatting Doesn't Actually Delete Anything

Here's the bit worth understanding, because it explains everything else in this video. Formatting usually just resets the index. The operating system marks the space as available and says, right, we can reuse that now. But the actual data isn't shredded in that moment. It's still physically sitting on the drive.

Until those sectors get overwritten with something else, recovery tools can often still see the data and reconstruct it. That's not a fault in your drive — it's just how formatting works. Which is why "I formatted it" and "the data is gone" are two very different statements.

Recoverit makes that painfully visible. On the left-hand side I could watch it rebuilding the folder tree. On the right, I could click a photo or a document and preview it before recovering anything. Brilliant when it's your own files you're chasing — that's how I've used it plenty of times before. A bit unsettling when you realise somebody else could point the exact same software at your old drive.

04Test Two: Second-Hand Drives I Bought Online

Seeing it on my own drive was one thing. I wanted to know what happens when you buy someone else's storage. So I jumped on a local marketplace and picked up a used external hard drive and a USB stick. Both listed as formatted and ready to use. Plugged them into the Mac — same as before, Finder showed them as totally empty.

Then I ran Recoverit at them. On the USB stick: old documents, personal photos, and work files that clearly belonged to the previous owner. On the hard drive: more files again, and enough file names to piece together bits of someone's working life and personal life.

To be very clear — I didn't open or keep any of it. I'm not interested in poking through someone's private stuff, and none of it is shown in the video. But it proved the point completely. Formatting is not data privacy. If I could see it with off-the-shelf software, so can anybody else.

05How I Prep a Drive Before I Sell or Recycle It

Recovery software has become two separate things for me. One, it's the safety net for when something goes wrong and I need files back. Two, it's a reality check for privacy — it shows me what's still sitting there before I hand a drive to a stranger. Here's the routine now.

Back it up properly first

Anything important on that drive needs to already live somewhere else — cloud, another drive, a NAS, whatever suits your setup. I keep external drives at different physical locations, including a set at my parents' place, so there's genuine redundancy rather than one box sitting on one desk.

Then do a real erase, not a quick format

Depending on the drive, that's either a proper secure erase tool or full disk encryption. If a drive has been encrypted from day one and I'm confident in that, wiping the keys makes the old data unreadable. If it was never encrypted, I use overwrite tools built for secure deletion — because a quick format, as we've just established, doesn't do the job.

06The Step Almost Nobody Does: Verify the Wipe

This is where Recoverit earns its place even after you've wiped something, and it's the habit I'd most like people to take from this video. Once I've done whatever secure erase I'm using, I plug the device back in, open Recoverit, and run another scan.

If it only turns up random fragments or nothing usable, that's my confirmation — in practical terms the data is no longer easily recoverable, and I'm comfortable passing the drive on. If I can still see recognisable file names and previews, I haven't done enough yet, and that drive isn't going anywhere near a buyer. The problem for most people is they have no way of knowing which of those two situations they're in. This gives you one.

07Buying Used Storage? Scan It First

It works in the other direction too. If you buy second-hand drives, USB sticks or SD cards, assume there's data on there until you've wiped it and tested it yourself. Before I put any of my own files on used storage now, I scan it with Recoverit to see what's on it, do a proper wipe, then start using it.

It's a couple of extra steps and maybe ten minutes. But it means I'm not quietly mixing my own work in with somebody else's leftovers — and it means I know exactly what I've got.

Worth saying too: this isn't only about external drives. If you're getting rid of an old Mac or Windows machine, the built-in drive has exactly the same problem, and it's the one people forget about most.

08Coming Up in Parts 2 & 3

This is part one of three. In part two we flip the problem around and talk backups — including a real situation where I had a backup and it still wasn't enough, because the backup drive itself had issues. In part three we tie it together with the three biggest lies most of us believe about our data, each one put to the test here on the Gold Coast.

If you've ever sold or given away a drive and wondered what was still on it, drop it in the comments on the video — I'm reading them and using the stories to shape parts two and three.

⚙Wondershare Recoverit at a Glance

$Where to Get It

Download it, point it at an old drive or USB stick you thought was empty, and see what comes back. It's a genuinely eye-opening ten minutes. Any purchase through these links supports the channel at no extra cost to you. For more real-world tech reviews, subscribe to MrYouWho on YouTube — who tests it for you? MrYouWho.

?Frequently Asked Questions

Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As a Wondershare affiliate, we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. All opinions are based on hands-on real-world testing.