When you delete items on your computer and then empty the recycle bin, where do the items go?
by 
nightminds
ANSWERS: 4
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Sites and email addresses are never destroyed. you might empty the recycle bin, but the address are on a disc, somewhere in your computer. Its stored this way for a reason.
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They don't "go" anywhere. But the pointers to them are removed, so they might as well have gone. The space they used to occupy has been marked as "free". Sooner or later, something else will need some disk space, and they will be overwritten. But in the short term, they remain present but inaccessible like a letter you have dropped in the trash which has not yet been pulped.
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Just to add to what ImAlec said, when a file is in the recycle bin, it's just being protected by Windows so you can change your mind about deleting it - but it's not really deleted at all. When you empty the recycle bin, the file's protected status is removed so that it is in effect deleted. When you delete a file, the bits remain where they were - they are not written over (yet), only the (for lack of a less technical term) <b>listing</b> to the existence of the file including where it is located are affected. And the listing is not deleted either, just renamed to something Windows will purposely ignore. Any file recovery utility sees right through this little game of hide and seek and can bring the file right back. But only if Windows hasn't over-written another file where the original used to exist. Once the original file's space is used by a new file, the old file is basically irretrievable. I say basically, because forensic tools can recover files using special equipment, even if they were written over 6 times by other files.
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The literal answer is that the first character of the filname is erased. Using a deleted file recover program gives you a list of those files with a missing first character and you simply fill it in to recover your choice. Many a crook has sat in the hoosgow, thinking that he was sure he had erased all the evidence from his computer :-)
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