What Happens To A File When You Delete It From Windows ?

[midnitesun 0]

now have you ever wondered what happens to a file when you delete it and empty the recycle bin ? surely it should not be in the computer by then ?? well i ahd a big sprise waiting for today morning when i turned on my computer , i will tell you waht happened , yesterday a colleague of mine put sum flash files on my desktop and when i went home i deleted them and emptied recycle bin assuming he should have made a copy and has taken to his computer , but when i turned on my office computer this morning the files i deleted were sitting right on my desktop again !! boy u'll bet i was suprised , so i asked him and he told me that he didnt make any copies and since it is hours of work he can't possibly redo it so he recovered the files from my hard drive again , but i told him i deleted them and emptied recycle bin and that was when i came to know that not only cats have nine lives but files you create in windows have three lives too,and he showed me the program he used and it was full of files i recently deleted !, so what happens is when you delete a file it goes to recycle bin ,but infact it is not moved to the recylce bin at all it remains in the same location only its complete path and name is removed and placed in a hidden folder called recycled and the file is then renamed , its original name and path been stored in a hidden index file called info2 located in the recycled folder , so when we click restore in the recylce bin the original path is read from the the info file and the file is again renamed and its directory entry restored , so what happens when we clicke empty recycle bin ? no the file dont get deleted even now ! windows just changes the files path and name to indicate the space it occupied is no longer needed and is available for use ,but any time the OS needs sspace for any other file it may be overwritten , untill the file gets overwritten by the OS it still exists on the hard disk and is fully recoverable by using programs which enable file recovery , pretty cool for geeks who make the repeated mistake of deleting an important file and again deleting it from recycle bin and then pull their hair for being such a nerd huh !

[AlanDS 0]

I wonder How the File Recovey softwares restore those old files. Some softwares even challenge the recovery of file after the file-system format! Really amazing!

[lone_wild_wolf 0]

Ok fine it goes to the recycle bin and then if deleted is not totally removied but just renamed and make permanently hidden......file recovering softwares jus look for the file extentions on the harddisk's hidden area and finds it.

[sportytalk 0]

Yep, the file's don't get deleted properly, even if you try emptying the recycle bin and then trying to manually delete the content from the recycler file. I tried debugging a friend's computer once and found this out for myself. This person had an infected file on their computer and I moved it to the recycle bin. I then clicked empty which worked fine, we thought the file had gone but we were wrong. When we restarted the computer, the virus program alerted us that there was this virus, the same one i removed, in a folder called recycler.Eventually, I managed to remove this in safe mode i think it was, although can't really remember. It was quite a long time ago. What i do remember though, is that I spent quite a while working out how to do it, as when I tried deleting, I was receiving access denied and unable to delete messages.

[Plenoptic 0]

Ya I have heard about the same thing but sort of forgot how it worked. I would like to try to buy one of those programs in case I ever do delete a file that I need later on in life. I though all you had to do was find that hidden folder but I guess not. It is really helpful I'm sure in a work environment when you delete something important on accident.

[dselley 0]

I use a program called eraser to permanently delete documents you can find it here http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/ it overwrites the file 35 times so it cannot be recovered very easily.

[mayank 2]

well, the concept is this that when you delete a file and erase the recycle bin its traces are left on the "harddisk clusters" and those traces are used by recovery softwares to recover the files. Now, if some data get written on those clusters then the file recovery software can get the data for you however, it may not be hundred percent correct..it may be corrupt file too!Things get more and more technical with file recovery and how data acts on the harddisk and the harddisk functioning and all...so, if you actually want to know it then I'll suggest you do Google it

[kdr_98 0]

Actually, nothing has changed since the old MSDOS time.A file exists in a linking of clusters (at the end of a cluster there is a link to the next cluster).When deleting a file (you erase the first letter of the filename and mark the cluster as free).The link to next clusters remains but they also marked as no longer in use.So if you didn't write anything on your hard drive on the place of the clusters you can undelete the file from your harddrive.If you want to delete files so you they can't be recoverd you have to wipe the entire free space on the disk (wipe = overwrite it with a dummy value), this can also be used for Memory cards of a Photo cam.Even a format doesn't delete everything on the disk , with some programs you can recover the information on the drive.

[gaea 0]

Yeah, the fact that files don't get really "deleted" until they're over written about 4 times has saved my **bottom** a few times. Having acidentilly deleted a number of files, it was great to be able to recover them.The program i used is called rest###...i'll try to put up a link to it when i get back to my own computer. It also has a security shredder that'll make files impossible to recover (by over writting their sectors 5-25 times).

[JOE IV 0]

now have you ever wondered what happens to a file when you delete it and empty the recycle bin ? surely it should not be in the computer by then ?? well i ahd a big sprise waiting for today morning when i turned on my computer , i will tell you waht happened , yesterday a colleague of mine put sum flash files on my desktop and when i went home i deleted them and emptied recycle bin assuming he should have made a copy and has taken to his computer , but when i turned on my office computer this morning the files i deleted were sitting right on my desktop again !! boy u'll bet i was suprised , so i asked him and he told me that he didnt make any copies and since it is hours of work he can't possibly redo it so he recovered the files from my hard drive again , but i told him i deleted them and emptied recycle bin and that was when i came to know that not only cats have nine lives but files you create in windows have three lives too,and he showed me the program he used and it was full of files i recently deleted !, so what happens is when you delete a file it goes to recycle bin ,but infact it is not moved to the recylce bin at all it remains in the same location only its complete path and name is removed and placed in a hidden folder called recycled and the file is then renamed , its original name and path been stored in a hidden index file called info2 located in the recycled folder , so when we click restore in the recylce bin the original path is read from the the info file and the file is again renamed and its directory entry restored , so what happens when we clicke empty recycle bin ? no the file dont get deleted even now ! windows just changes the files path and name to indicate the space it occupied is no longer needed and is available for use ,but any time the OS needs sspace for any other file it may be overwritten , untill the file gets overwritten by the OS it still exists on the hard disk and is fully recoverable by using programs which enable file recovery , pretty cool for geeks who make the repeated mistake of deleting an important file and again deleting it from recycle bin and then pull their hair for being such a nerd huh !

Wow.. I never knew that. You can really recover files after deleting them from the recycle bin?

[Johnny 1]

So if the deleted file gets overwritten by new data, it's not really considered taking up space on the drive right? So what's the worry?I could see privacy issues, but I never keep anything overly private on my computer, and nobody has access to it, so I don't really see why I would bother deleting...deleted...files.

[ghostrider 0]

The way it works is when you delete a file from the recycle bin Windows simply marks the file as deleted in the FAT (or MFT if you're using NFTS), if Windows is searching for space to put a new file it has the option of overwriting the space of that deleted file. This is part of the reason why fragmentaion occurs; however if Windows were to actually delete the file completely it would take up a lot more time than it already does.

[mtvoyagers 0]

Huh i guess this could be a blessing for some people but for those seeking privacy, like an investiagtion company with high profile cases that are for the eyes of the person or group seeking the imformation, this can be a major problem, i knew that os-s did that but i guess i haddn't taken the time to put two and two together and actually relize what was happening, but its really no problem for me myself

[kawasu 0]

ooo i alsos wondered how this process actually worked, i knew about it but i din get the whole shibang of it. i guess this will be a handy fact to remember next time i delete something by accident... which i do occasionally... i alsways shift+del so when i get a wrong file i totally screw myself over >< thanks for this info haha, i'll keep it in mind next time. gotta go find an application which finds these files now ;D

[iGuest 3]

What will I do?

What Happens To A File When You Delete It From Windows ?

 

I accidentally entered a wrong Command on Command Prompt and Accidentaly deleted all my Files . How will I get all those Files back? Is there Any way I could do that?

 

-reply by Dino