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Tag: Conservation of Quantum Information

Ctrl+Alt+Del: Part 1—The Destruction of Quantum Information

Have you ever thought about what happens to all the information you delete from your computer’s hard drive? You might be surprised to discover that deleted files aren’t actually erased. Even when you delete a file from your computer’s trash folder, your computer holds onto the file while erasing the file name and its listing in any directories. The file itself remains on your hard drive, functionally irretrievable (without special software) until it is overwritten when the hard drive needs that data space. At that point, your data is actually irretrievable. That portion of the hard drive’s disk space has…

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