Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
Have you ever (over time) placed, then deleted files/folders in the root directory?
IIRC the entries still are there, just marked inactive.
De-frag recovers this "lost space"
Norton Utilities (back before Symantec added the yellow color and odor to the product), had a "Diskedit that allowed bit level edits in the bowels of the fine system  . That is when you could see what was really there. |
I occasionally defrag my hard drives. This is to ensure that my system doesn't get bogged down by having to hunt down the scattered parts of my files and to ensure the integrity of those files.
If I remember correctly (from the MS-DOS days), when you delete a file it doesn't actually delete the file. Instead, the system alters the filename (I think it changed the first character to a "$") to hide it and to indicate that the space the file occupies is available for reuse. Overtime, the space will be overwritten with new data.
When an undelete option was added to MS-DOS (it had been previously available via other utilities) it became possible for the operating system to undelete a file by recalling the file and restoring its proper name as long as you didn't wait too long to do it. If you wait too long the file will be unable to be restored.