By Steve Burke
As part of GN's first 'officially unofficial' Hard Drive Week, we're ready to talk about file deletion and recovery! I previously mentioned in the "how to recover a deleted document" guide that recovering files is exceedingly easy provided the hard drive hasn't yet overwritten the territory previously occupied by the content. Why, though, does deleting a file leave it recoverable? This quick guide walks through the logic of how file deletion works in Windows.
Different operating systems will yield different file deletion tactics - to be sure, some Linux variants are quite comprehensive in their total annihilation of anything so much as clicked in a funny way. Windows, however, doesn't quite work that thoroughly; whether or not you like the safety net of recoverable "deleted" files or you're terrified of it, it's something that we can work with and either recover or hide. Let's answer that "what happens when a file is deleted" question...
