how does uninstalling a software work? Why is it so quick, when installing takes longer?
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basically, when you install something, you mark an area of disk space as being “file A”, then copy all of File A into that space. you also, as the same time, create a entry in the disks index that says “File A is at *this* location”. whenever it needs to find the file, it goes to check the index, then goes to that location to retrieve it.
when you delete the file, all the computer does is get rid of the index entry saying where it is. the physical data is still in the same location, but as far as the computer is concerned, that area is just “free space”. eventually, the area will get overwritten by some new file, but until then, it sits there.
you might have heard people say that “files are never really deleted”, or talk about recovering a file. this is what they mean. you can in theory go into the disk system and rebuild the index.
the only way to permanently remove a file so it cant be recovered is by repeatedly overwriting the disk space to remove any traces of the data. Theirs purpose built software used for this (the version i know is called “blancco”), but merely pressing “delete” just clears the registry and doesn’t remove the actual data.
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