Edit:
Fantastic answers, thanks all for the insight!
In: Technology
For mechanical hard drives, to save time, instead of writing zeroes or random data on top of an existing file, typically just the reference in what essentially is a giant table if contents is erased. To the OS, the results in the same effect: that space now contains no data of any importance and is available for future use.
However, unless something else is written to that space, the physical location that file formerly resided in the disc surface will contain the data that previously was that file. Software tools can instruct a drive to go to that specific location and read what’s there even if the OS thinks there’s nothing of importance, and the previous file can be recovered if it is still there.
For an analogy, think of just erasing a single line out of the table of contents of a notebook, instead of also going to that specific page and erasing the data itself.
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