Like where does it go?
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Most of the time, it doesn’t go anywhere. Typically, the computer gives the data a mark that tells it two things: it shouldn’t display the data anymore, and it’s okay to write over the data with something else if it needs extra space. But other than getting that mark, nothing actually happens to the data until it actually gets written over. This is why it’s sometimes possible to un-delete data: if it hasn’t been written over yet, it’s still there.
This also marks the difference between deleting data and *wiping* data. A data wiper first deletes data in the usual way, but then it immediately goes back into the data and writes over it (usually just with a repeating pattern, but the really good ones overwrite it with random junk). That way, the data cannot be recovered easily, because it’s actually gone: something else is there now.
If you want a historical metaphor, back in the days of writing on parchment in ancient monaateries, the actual parchment was very expensive. To save on costs, monasteries got into the practice of scraping the ink off of old parchments they felt were no longer needed, then writing on the now-blank parchment again. A parchment that used to hold one document but now holds another is called a *palimpsest*, and in some ways this is like deleting old data and writing over it.
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