Question about conservation of information in a black hole?

[zeromodz]

I understand that any information of an object falling into a black hole is conserved because the object asymptotically approaches the singularity leaving all the information at the surface area of the black hole until it evaporates. This is known as the holographic principle that three dimensional object information can be projected in two dimensions. My question is, how is information conserved with the initial mass at the singularity. The holographic principle only seems to save the conservation of information for things falling into the black hole after it formed. What the initial mass of the star at r = 0 or r ~ 0, right before the collapse. The black hole was born from that matter so it is actually inside the black hole to begin with. It has no connection with the surface area of the black hole. How on Earth could information be conserved here?

 

[LightHero]

The initial mass of the star is conserved at the singularity, but in a different form. At the singularity, the mass-energy of the star is converted into gravitational energy, which is then stored in the black hole's event horizon (the boundary of the black hole). This gravitational energy can be released when the black hole evaporates, and the energy is then emitted as Hawking radiation. As such, the information contained in the initial mass of the star is preserved, albeit in a different form.