If im downloading a large file and accidentally cancel it at 90%, why do I have to “redownload” it all over again? Where did the 90% go
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Think of it like building a sandcastle but knocking the sandcastle down before it is finished. The sand is still there but it is not organized in an accessible format because when CANCEL happened, it automatically said “Okay well you don’t need this anymore”. 90% of the information might still be usable IF you know EXACTLY what to look for, but if you’re like me, you don’t.
So when you delete a file, it doesn’t actually get deleted. The files are still there, but the pointers that say where the files are do get removed and when another file comes along the space where the first file was just gets re-written with the new data. The same thing happens with a cancelled download. The pointers that file either never get added or are deleted. The files are still there, your computer just doesn’t know where they are and they’ll get written over by something else.
Your hard drive has an index which keeps track of where each file is saved. It has some computer sciencey name, but it’s basically an index of everything saved on the hard drive. In fact, you don’t need to save whole files in one piece. Your computer can save bits and pieces all over, and the index keeps track of where everything is. When you need to load the file back, your computer reads the index to find where the file is saved and then reads the data from those locations. When you delete a file. Your computer doesn’t actually erase the data from storage. It just marks in the index that those locations are unused. This is what happens when you cancel a download. Everything that had been downloaded is still there, but the record of where it was saved is gone. Without that, your computer can’t get the file back because it doesn’t know where to read the file from.
It varies by device and operating system, some use memory to assemble the file and is lost when the device is rebooted, other systems have a temporary storage or cache, temporary names and extensions are used until all the pieces completed then all pieces are renamed and assembled into your downloaded file. If your computer crashes there is a possibility these files can remain indefinitively taking up space. That is why you should clean your temporary folders although most modern OS’s take care of that automatically.
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