Why does installing a game/program sometimes take several hours, but uninstalling usually take no more than a few minutes?
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ELI3 : it is way easier to destroy something that has been written than to write it. When writing say an essay…it takes a lot of time and effort to do it right, right ? but it can only take secondes to delete the save or shred the paper.
Installing requires the computer to allocate (i.e. “reserve”) enough space for the program being installed. After said allocation, it then needs to write the information to the drive. If you’re installing a game by downloading, this also means you’re throttled by the speed of your personal internet bandwidth.
Uninstalling is basically the computer marking that allocated space as “for sale”. To you, it looks deleted. To the computer, nothing is ever deleted. “Deleted” info is just info that’s been marked as available to be overwritten. That information only disappears when it’s been overwritten, which is also why data recovery can recover anything you recently deleted
When u delete on modern operating system it basically just make not visible to the user, until the space gets allocated for a new file randomly.
Scary part delete files sell your laptop. Someone can use software to just find anything still marked as deleted, but wasn’t overwritten.
If you do a true delete, it will take much longer time, and put more wear on the storage device.
inside the disk the computer knows a program/game is stored from “this point to that point”, everything that needs to happens (the code) is figured out in between. So when installing it it copies one piece, then the next, then the next…etc…. all in sequence until the end. You play the game and everything is figured out in between the “bookends”, where the code starts and ends.
When you tell it to uninstall it tells the computer this space is now available, not reserved any more, it’s no longer off limits, this space is available to store new stuff…. but it’s not actually over written until the disk needs the space… so basically it says this space is available to store stuff but may not use it until it needs it.
Same reason you can spend an hour writing a 2 page essay, and just a few seconds ripping it up.
Writing data is more time consuming then destroying it.
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Writing a book takes a long time, deleting a book doesn’t. When writing something, what comes next is very important. When deleting, it doesnt matter what comes next as much as knowing when to stop. Keeping track of what already has been done, what is yet to be done, and what is next takes a lot of storage and processing for people and computers alike.
Building a house takes months, burning it down takes a gallon of gasoline and about 10 minutes.
Wtf are you installing that takes hours? Or what kind of 1990s potato are you installing it on?
You take a blank canvas and make a painting. You name it “Program” and it takes you many hours.
Eventually, you decide you don’t like Program anymore, but you don’t want to waste canvas so you just get rid of the name tag.
When you go to make a new painting, you take the canvas that uses to be Program and paint right over it. It doesn’t matter that it was once Program, cause the new paint covers it up.
That’s what your computer does. It doesn’t need to delete anything when it uninstalls because, when it goes to use that memory, it will have to set every bit regardless of what it already is. This is also why people can recover data, they just go through your blank canvases and rename the ones that already have paint.
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