When I delete a file from an external hard drive, where does it go?

Question

I deleted a file from my external hard drive when it was attached to cousin's computer.

I want to retrieve that file. Is the file now in my cousin's computer somewhere or even their recycle bin? Or is it somewhere still on my external hard drive?

I ask because my cousin no longer has that computer. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

It depends on how you set it up. You can set it up to have a recycle bin on the external drive, but it seems they're normally set up to just delete the file.



When a file is deleted in Windows it changes the first letter in the file name to something that tells the computer that the file can be overwritten.



You can use an undelete program that will scan for such files and try to recover what they can, if you haven't written much to the drive since the file was deleted, it's probably still in good shape.



I believe Recuva is one of the modern undelete programs out there. I haven't had to use one of those since the Dos days.



And as a final note, you might look into a way to back up these files, hard drives are far from reliable and can die without warning.

Answer 2

No you can't retrieve that file. When you delete a file from an external device it goes into cyberspace instead of the recycle bin. If you haven't written anything on the external drive since doing this, it may be possible to recover it using a data recovery program.



Ron

Answer 3

Its gone! The header that points at that file has been removed. The bits and bytes that make up the file will still be on the hard drive - UNLESS you have written something new to the drive since.

RECUVA might be able to find it.

Answer 4

It's still in the nether world if the external hard drive if you download recovery software you might get it back

Answer 5

It would go to the cousins' recycling bin. Sorry, your data is gone.

Answer 6

it goes into the bitbucket, the bitbucket is like a dumpster for data its blue shaped like a dumpster and is inside your computer