Why does installing a game/program sometimes take several hours, but uninstalling usually take no more than a few minutes?
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Usually, when you uninstall something, nothing actually happens to the data. Most of the 0’s and 1’s are still there, your computer just gets rid of the tag on that data that says “Hey, this is Program X, don’t write over this!” The analogy a lot of people use is this: a computer is a library, and each file is a book. When you delete a file, nobody throws out the book. They just throw out the card catalog entry that leads to the book.
Later on when you install a new program, it’ll look for some free space, see that there’s no tag on that area, and overwrite it with its own 0’s and 1’s.
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