system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When you delete something off a phone or computer, where does it actually go?

How can you put some data into a hardrive, then you can magically make it disappear for more room for data?
gpt
Data is merely a series of bits (1s and 0s) and bytes (8 bits..more efficient in a lot of ways).

So...you have this device which stores that information. Well, you also have to store **where** you stored that information.  Let's say that you want to store a 2MB song on an 8GB device. There are somewhere near 4,000 places it could be put. How can you tell where it is? The same way you tell where a book in a library is. You create an index.


So..what you do is you store the data then you tell the device where the data is.

When you "delete" the file, you are just removing the references that that space is used: the index. Whatever was written is still there until something writes over it.