What happens to a file moved off C in explorer?

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Craig Warren - 06 Apr 2004 20:52 GMT

I understand when a file is deleted, the first character
gets changed so the system know the file's space is
available to be overwritten. I moved a file off my hard
drive onto a network server. The network server copy
became corrupted and unrecoverable. Then I wanted to
recover it from my hard drive. I looked for it on my hard
drive in DOS with a deleted-file recovery program. There
were other files there with the first character changed,
but the one I had moved off the hard drive wasn't there.
What does Windows do with the data on a local disk after
it is "moved" off the disk in Windows Explorer?

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Steve Baron - KB3MM - 06 Apr 2004 21:01 GMT

> I understand when a file is deleted, the first character
> gets changed so the system know the file's space is
> available to be overwritten.

No, that simply indictes the directory entry is available.

I moved a file off my hard

> drive onto a network server. The network server copy
> became corrupted and unrecoverable. Then I wanted to
> recover it from my hard drive. I looked for it on my hard
> drive in DOS with a deleted-file recovery program.

Files MUST be contiguous in order to be undeleted AND
the disk must not have been used so that the data was not over wriitten.

> There
> were other files there with the first character changed,
> but the one I had moved off the hard drive wasn't there.
> What does Windows do with the data on a local disk after
> it is "moved" off the disk in Windows Explorer?

Nothing directly, but it can de over-written by another file.

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