when you delete files to your recycle bin and then delete them,do they stay in your pc and how do you check?

Answer 1

You can get a disk recovery program like DiskInternals. When they are "deleted" all that happens is that their directory entry is altered so it looks like they are not there. If you don't write over them with some new file they can be recovered easily.

Answer 2

A lot of answers, a lot right but some wrong. If you think about it a hard disk is a bit like a library. If you go to a library and you are not really sure what book you want you look at the index. In a computer every file appears in an index. Just as the library index points you to a particular shelf or at least a particular part of the library the computer index points, generally speaking, to the start of the file. If you delete a file then all that really happens is that the entry is removed from the index. The file is not altered at all so it remains complete on the disk. This is where things start to get confusing. A book when it is published contains a certain number of pages. However when we create a file on a computer say with a wordprocessor we don't really know how long it is going to be. At some point we may try to save it and the area of disc we are writing to may not be quite big enough so the last few bytes of information is in fact a sort of pointer that shows where the disc the next part of the file can be found. Now a really big file or one being written to a disc that has not been defragmented recently can have literally hundreds of these little pieces. So therefore if you delete this file it shows up in your recycle bin as a single filename. If you delete it from the recycle bin you are not freeing one particular piece of disc but a whole load of bits. As before it is the index that is altered rather than the file itself. So you cannot check to see if it is there because it does not appear in the index. As far as a normal user is concerned the file does not exist end of story. Now I sure there will be lots of people out there that can quite legitimately complain about the information I have given. I do realise about indexes pointing to indexes and the few bytes at the beginning of the portion of a file pointing to where the previous part is. I am just trying to explain how things happen in a superficial way to easily answer the question. What defragging does to files and the many other things raised by other posters deserve to be separate questions.

Answer 3

Once you have deleted a file from the recycle bin, it's pretty gone for good. The only way to recover a file after that is to purchase data recovery software, or enlist the services of data recovery specialists. Even then there are no guarantees.

Answer 4

Deleting files in any version of Windows actually renames the file and changes it's properties to "hidden." When you do regular maintenance those files are overwritten. This happens during a Defragmentation of the hard drive. This should be done monthly or even more often. Find it in Programs; Accessories; System Tools (depending on your Windows version). If this is done regularly, checking is not needed. Windows does this so it can un-delete files if you choose to recover them.

Answer 5

Each piece of data written to the hard drive is started off with a few bytes of data, to basically say X amounts of data is stored in Z part of the hard drive.

When you empty the recycle bin, it doesn't physically erase ALL the data, just that tiny little part of it, therefore your data is still there, however it is unaccessable, unless you use some special kind of software to recover those files.

However, if another piece of data overwrites your "deleted" data, than the "deleted" data is really deleted.

Answer 6

yes the files are still there but you will not be able to see them. When you delete something from your recycle bin your computer sets the space the file was using to writeable. so the next time some data is writen to your hard drive the writable space will be used.
so in theory the file is still there until it is written over. some software can recover deleted files but only if they have been written over.

Answer 7

They can be recovered even if you have overwritten them.
Formatted the drive and installed a different OP. If you want to make sure do what PJ said, Webroot do a nice program called
Window Washer that lets you choose the number of (washes) /overwrites. You can also also clean the complete drive of traces
of data and the slack space left after you think you got rid of something. If you are still worried, smash the drive with a hammer and scatter in different dustbins in different parts of the county!

Answer 8

They stay in your pc unless you defragment you disk, move files around different folders, copies files from elsewhere to your system disk (usually C:) or download any files. When that happens, there is no gaurantee any of the files are recoverable. There is no gaurantee the files will be removed either.

If you haven't done anything to your system disk, you can run anyone of the Undelete programs to find and recover them. Filenames may be slightly corrupted, but the files will be there.

Answer 9

They are for all purposes deleted. You would have to have special software to retrieve it. It will always be on the hard drive until it is over written at some point. Thats why if you ever sell give away a computer etc take the hard drive out and destroy it.

Answer 10

From what I understand is that they stay on your Hard Drive until they are written/occupied by other deleted stuff. I think there are some programs that could help you recover them. I don't think that there is a way to check.