Where do files go when you hit "Delete"?????

[char3327]

So I just deleted a bunch of files from my computer to clean up my file explorer and I was wondering...where do those files go?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Nowhere. The data is still on your disk. The pointers to the data is just removed. And the data will be overwritten when you write over it.

[Arika]

delete: they go to the recycling bin

shift+delete: they are written over as being "blank" and can technically be recovered until that part of the disk is rewritten to

[char3327]

@Electronics Wizardy So "deleting files" just means that you are moving the data so that you can't see it anymore basically?

[Jtalk4456]

Just now, char3327 said:

@Electronics Wizardy So "deleting files" just means that you are moving the data so that you can't see it anymore basically?

think of it like a real trash can. You spend all week throwing stuff in there but it's not really gone, just sitting in the can. Until you take it to the curb and clean out the recycle bin on the desktop. Even then you can technically recover it, same way you can technically go to the dump and the items are still there somewhere, you just have to find em

[char3327]

@Jtalk4456 That actually makes a lot of sense...thanks! 

[SupaKomputa]

In windows, if you click delete it will be "moved" to recycle bin, which can be recovered if you change your mind.

If you wipe the recycle bin, the file will be gone.

If you click SHIFT and press delete it will immediately delete it without going to recycle bin.

[Mark Kaine]

19 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

In windows, if you click delete it will be "moved" to recycle bin, which can be recovered if you change your mind.

If you wipe the recycle bin, the file will be gone.

If you click SHIFT and press delete it will immediately delete it without going to recycle bin.

that explains some things.....

 

 

 

Honestly it would be awesome if that "feature" could be turned off... im not actually clumsy...! but my setup is ,kinda, and no leds on keyboard doesn't help...

 

I don't think this actually happened to me , but I recently deleted a bunch of videos while shuffling some stuff around... which was also weird because as far i can tell windows just changed what was actually open, so I copied then deleted stuff from and to the same drive... which didn't really make any sense lol.

 

I don't think I lost something important because i have backups, but im not totally sure either! -_-

 

 

[char3327]

@Mark Kaine Wow, haha good luck with that!

[jsrfuture]

it's not permanent, even if it's no longer in the recycle bin, until new data have been writed where your old data was. Often you can get some of the data back with testdisk, probably all of it if it was on a secondary drive.