This allows you (and other people) to recover files you’ve deleted.
This is a particularly important concern when you’re disposing of a computer or hard drive.
A file recovery program can scan a hard drive for these deleted files and restore them.
If the file has been partially overwritten, the file recovery program can only recover part of the data.
Note that this doesn’t apply to solid-state drives (SSDs) – see below for why.
Deleting a file’s pointer and marking its space as available is an extremely fast operation.
In contrast, actually erasing a file by overwriting its data takes significantly longer.
For example, if you’re deleting a 10 GB file, that would be near-instantaneous.
Solid-State Drives Work Differently: None of this applies to solid state drives (SSDs).
This would make writing to an SSD slower over time.
Recuva and other utilities can scan a hard drive for deleted files and allow you to recover them.
If you’re selling or otherwise disposing of a computer or hard drive, you should exercise caution.
For example,CCleaner’s integrated Drive Wiper tool can do this.
You should now understand why deleted files can be recovered and when they can’t.
