What happens to the items you delete from the recycle bin on the computer/laptop?

Arrow in the Knee · 09-10-2012 02:54PM #1

As above

Just wondering where the items 'memory' goes cause it most remain in the hard drive, right?

tricky D · 09-10-2012 03:05PM

The data remains until overwritten at a later time. Take a jpg called photo.jpg and delete it. The entry on the system which said where photo.jpg resides is deleted but not the actual photo data. The bit of the hard drive is now considered as free to be used for something else even though the data is still there (and can usually be recovered).

For a real analogy, it's like deleting the address for a house but not actually the house, until someone else comes along and rebuilds on the land and calls it something else.

Arrow in the Knee · 09-10-2012 03:08PM

Would the deleted items use up some memory?

tricky D · 09-10-2012 03:13PM

It would still occupy disk space (memory is a different thing) but is considered as available and is counted as part of the free disk space and not in use.

keith16 · 09-10-2012 03:18PM

tricky D wrote: »

The data remains until overwritten at a later time. Take a jpg called photo.jpg and delete it. The entry on the system which said where photo.jpg resides is deleted but not the actual photo data. The bit of the hard drive is now considered as free to be used for something else even though the data is still there (and can usually be recovered).

For a real analogy, it's like deleting the address for a house but not actually the house, until someone else comes along and rebuilds on the land and calls it something else.

Do NAMA act as the recycle bin in this analogy?

tricky D · 09-10-2012 03:22PM

Bad RAM with memory leakage bringing the whole system to almost a halt:p

steve_r · 09-10-2012 03:22PM

tricky D wrote: »

The data remains until overwritten at a later time. Take a jpg called photo.jpg and delete it. The entry on the system which said where photo.jpg resides is deleted but not the actual photo data. The bit of the hard drive is now considered as free to be used for something else even though the data is still there (and can usually be recovered).

For a real analogy, it's like deleting the address for a house but not actually the house, until someone else comes along and rebuilds on the land and calls it something else.

So out of curiosity, say I had a full 10gb hard disk. I delete 1gb of data.

Is that Igb of deleted data recoverable, as long as no more data is written to the disk?

I'm just being nosey really

ted1 · 09-10-2012 03:23PM

Arrow in the Knee wrote: »

Would the deleted items use up some memory?

yes but should the memory be needed it can be written over.

data recovery works by lookighn for chunks of data that are not in the FAT table.

tricky D · 09-10-2012 03:29PM

steve_r wrote: »

So out of curiosity, say I had a full 10gb hard disk. I delete 1gb of data.

Is that Igb of deleted data recoverable, as long as no more data is written to the disk?

I'm just being nosey really

Yup, it is recoverable until overwritten at a later stage, but even just using the computer might mean some of it gets overwritten despite you not saving any files at all. Just using the machine writes all sorts of files to disk but usually only the system drive (C:).

steve_r · 09-10-2012 03:37PM

tricky D wrote: »

Yup, it is recoverable until overwritten at a later stage, but even just using the computer might mean some of it gets overwritten despite you not saving any files at all. Just using the machine writes all sorts of files to disk but usually only the system drive (C:).

Thanks

Torqay · 09-10-2012 04:28PM

If you want to delete the files beyond recovery, use Heidi's Eraser. CCleaner also has a feature to overwrite free space (which can also be used as a substitute for the lacking TRIM command in Windows XP... if you have a solid state disk).

coylemj · 09-10-2012 05:18PM

tricky D wrote: »

Yup, it is recoverable until overwritten at a later stage, but even just using the computer might mean some of it gets overwritten despite you not saving any files at all. Just using the machine writes all sorts of files to disk but usually only the system drive (C:).

If you specify a fixed size paging file you can reduce that risk. Otherwise the paging file will continuously expand and contract and potentially overwrite space that has been freed up by deleting files, thereby rendering them unrecoverable.

You can't really do much about other disk users like the internet browser cache so in general terms, the longer you use the machine, the more likely it is that free space gets overwritten and deleted files are physically lost.

Arrow in the Knee · 09-10-2012 05:53PM

How would you recover the files that were deleted?

tricky D · 09-10-2012 05:58PM

coylemj wrote: »

You can't really do much about other disk users like the internet browser cache so in general terms, the longer you use the machine, the more likely it is that free space gets overwritten and deleted files are physically lost.

If you know early enough (ie. pretty much immediately), you have the option to whip the disk out and slave it, so no such things like browsers and system activity can get to the free space.

Arrow in the Knee wrote: »

How would you recover the files that were deleted?

Recuva or similar data recovery utilities.

Dude111 · 10-10-2012 06:23AM

Arrow in the Knee wrote:

How would you recover the files that were deleted?

You can use what i have buddy: REST3123 .. A very good program!

Also lets you TOTALLY REMOVE DELETED FILES (Actually clears all deleted space)

www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html (RESTORATION.ZIP)

What happens to the items you delete from the recycle bin on the computer/laptop?

Comments