system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Where do deleted files go when you delete them?
gpt
nowhere, they stay on your hard drive.  the os keeps pointers and only deletes the pointer to the actual location on the hdd, until they are over written.  so if you could manually look at the data in your hard drive and knew exactly where all the pieces are, they you can reconstruct the original file.