Overwrite

Overwrite refers to the process of replacing old information by new one. Overwriting generally occurs, when unused file system clusters are written upon with new data.

There are two main types of overwriting: 1) replacing text, and 2) replacing files.

• Replacing text is supported by most word processing programs which allow to change existing characters with the characters that you type. Usually code editors have special fields, where you can type the text for overwriting (to access these fields you need to press Ctrl +F on the keyboard which activates the “find and replace” mode).

• Replacing files can be initialized by an attempt to save a document with the same filename as an existing document. You will be asked, if you want to overwrite the file, and if you press “Ok”, the old file will be overwritten. Similarly, when uploading or moving files to a directory, you will be asked, if you would like to overwrite existing files with the same filenames.

After going through the process of overwriting, the data cannot be recovered.