How Safe is the Data on Your Hard Disk?
http://www.stcboston.org/archives/articles/harddisk.shtml

Varney, Gord
Boston Broadside
1991

Abstract:

As a technical writer with above average organizational skill, you likely already keep your files in nice little subdirectories in logical little groups -- User's Guide illustrations here, research notes there, stuff for the service manual over yonder. But what if, in an instant, your files were all taken out of their subdirectories and put in one big directory? Could you distinguish one file from the other without opening them up? You can only assume that files with identical names disappeared.