Does Recycle Delete Items All The Way Or does It Leave Part Of The File?

Question

With XP does the recycle bin delete all the way or does it just erase from sight and leave a trace and does it over time take up a large amount on your HDD?

Answer 1

When you delete a file, either through a DOS command or through the recycle bin, the file is not permanently gone from the hard drive. Windows just puts a symbol in front of the filename that tells Windows that the space on the drive that the file now occupies can be overwritten with other data. To completely "wipe" those files that you want no trace of to exist anymore, a program such as "Eraser" can be used. It's free, and available to read about at the below link.

Answer 2

Hey,

If you delete a file once, it'll go to the recycle. It stays there for X amount of days and then is deleted. If you keep deleting files, after so many files take up the recycle bin they will be replaced with newly deleted files. Your recycle bin has a capacity (not sure what it is at this point in time) and will run out at some point in time.

Regards,

Brandon

Answer 3

when you delete a file and send it to recycle,,this actually means nothing,,anyou still can recover it from recycle,,so its loction and space on the disk is still preserved ,,and you can test that using a larg file and see the capacity of your drive before and after sending it to the recycle and you will find that it is the same before and after,,, BUT when you delete the file from the recycle,, that actually means that you allowed your computer to use the space of this file to overwrite it if needed,, so you will see that the capacity of your drive will incearse by the size of the deleted file,,,however,,, untill your computer overwrite this space,,, you still can recover your deleted file by some advanced programs,,,