Where ACTUALLY deleted files go?

Muhatrima said:

this is some thought I had back in 2007 when I first encountered data recovery tools, I then imagined if my flash drive was actually 2GB while it said 1GB, because I can still store files on the 1GB available and recover files.

I then experimented with Flash drive size increasing tools, and they changed just the name of the 1GB into 2GB or whatever but the actual files that were stored on the drive never increased from 1GB.

Back to your question, There is always some storage that is preserved in any storage device, whether it be Flash Drive, Hard drive, SSD, etc. Then this storage is used as recycling and maybe something Like Cache as well, So the deleted files are in there unless you use a tool to "REALLY" Free up hard disk space, Those usually are called Driver Wiper/ Wipe Drive.

The space that is used for storing these deleted files is however not that large.
Eg: When you are installing fresh new windows on a hard drive, there is some storage partition that is always auto-created and is a very small size compared to your overall hard disk size, so this is where those files go.

These are just my experiments and my own conclusion. So, I could be wrong.

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Blue Panda said:

Because the space where the file is stored, is set free to be overwriten.

If you need that space, it will be used for a new file.

But you can get files and parts of it back with tools...

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airtman said:

Where do the dirts go after throughing them in the waste bin? it's still in your vacinity until it's taken out to the incinerator where it get burnt. The deleted file goes to the recycle bin, when deleted from the recycle bin gets burnt or overwritten. The size of the file is removed from the computer to make space for other valuable files. So your question is where the removed files go, they get overwritten by the new files. They stay right there but maybe gets compressed to become smaller. Thats why they can get retrieved even after being removed from the recycle bin. My 2 cent.

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PapaTele said:

Alright so here's what I understand.

When the file gets deleted from recycle bin, it stays there but empty. A new file's content data starts writing to that empty file. It's like clearing a chalkboard and writing new stuff on it.

Right?

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JasonS said:

Data can never be deleted from the HDDs. What the deletion command does is just make the space free to be overwritten. Which is why it is a highly recommended practice among techy smart phone users, before selling your gadgets make sure to format and fill your phone's memory with garbage content like useless high-quality video recording to overwrite the memory. So the bad guys won't be able to recover your valuable data. All they'll get is the useless content (used to fill the memory) even if they try.

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0xxi3 said:

Yes. But I’ll fill in with more details.

When a file is deleted, as you’ve said before, the reference to that file is deleted. All of the contents are still there, it isn’t empty but your device no longer sees these contents as anything useful and pretends that the space is empty.

Your chalkboard example is correct.

In the bigger picture, your entire storage is a chalkboard. Using that analogy, when a file is deleted you don’t clear that part of the chalkboard, you simply leave everything in place and pretend that it’s empty. If you need to use the same space, only at that point, a chunk of it will be overwritten.

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l0ner said:

The problem is you thinking of files as a physical item you can touch. Everything on the system is in bit represented by 1 and 0 which is translated to off and on in a cell represent by logic gates build on millions of these you can have different pattern at any point that represent your file.

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