Why does deleted data stay on a HDD once written, waiting to be overwritten, as opposed to being removed when requesting deletion?
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What we call deletion is actually just “freeing up” space that was originally allocated to a file. The whole concept of files and creating them and deleting them is all conceptual in software. There isn’t actually such a thing as deletion or even files on a physical level on a hard drive, memory or whatever that’s functioning as it should. The disk is already “full” from the day it rolls off the production line (or in the case of RAM, when it has power). You can’t physically remove a 0, and all writing is just overwriting what’s already there so why bother doing that right now when you’ll have to do it later anyway?
Think of how we divide up private land and build houses and farm it and keep animals and grow crops on it, or maintain parkland. That ownership is a human concept; the flora and fauna and dirt and rocks on the land are affected by it, but they have no concept of the made-up lines we impose on it, and existed before and will continue to exist after anyone claims ownership of it, until the next person comes along and changes it all up.
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