Deleted Files

Hi all.
I had a few black and white avi movies in a folder.
I wanted to burn 2 of them using Nero.
Nero told me there was not enough disc space to make the image.
I sent 6 of the movies in the folder to the recycling bin intending to restore them after burning.
I went to the recycling bin and only 3 movies were there!!
Why would it delete the other 3?
I wasn't told that anything would be permanently deleted.
Cheers

 

I'm not sure about what happened to your missing files but sending anything to your recycle bin does not free any space on your drive, the space used by the files is only allocated as being free once they've been deleted by emptying the recycle bin.

If your hard drive is that full, I suspect that file recovery software might fail to find the missing files as there's a very high chance that the space they originally took has been overwritten already.

How much free space do you have on the drive?

 

Hi satrow.
Thanks for the reply.
Sending files to the recycle bin certainly works.
I've done it before but not had this happen.

Perhaps this is what happened to my files??
Nero thought that there was space and used the 'space' I thought i'd made and overwrote my movie Avi's?? ( Laurel & Hardy movies!! )

I recovered 3 files and they were fine but one was corrupt and others were unrecoverable.
I have a 160gb drive partitioned into 3.
The portion I use for burning movies is 21gb with 3.4gb free at the mo.
I'll burn some avi's to disc to free up space and convert them at a later date.
I'll certainly not try it again!!

 

I believe putting them into the recycle bin compacts them.

 

well next time you are so short in space try to burn a dvd to free some space with the cache option of files off and in low speed to avoid buffer underun. after the first dvd you will free enought space to burn the rest at normal speed by cahing them.

 

As a followup for information:

Remember that the size of the Recycle Bin is by default 10% of available drive space (not to exceed 3.99gb with Windows XP). If the files that were moved to the Recycle Bin were in total larger than the available Recycle Bin space, then the FIFO law (First In First Out) does indeed come into play. You can check the available Recycle Bin space by right-clicking the desktop icon and clicking 'Properties'.

Also, Windows performs some hidden background processes when files are deleted, the most important of which is the renaming of the file. The purpose of this renaming process is so that Windows can avoid conflicts when and if the deleted file needs to be restored. A more thorough explanation can be found at Pandora Recovery.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Done a bit of experimenting after burning the Avi's to disc.
I selected 4 movies totalling 4.22gb.
I sent them to the recycle bin (10% of the partition = 2.1gb)
The files went to the bin.
I looked in the bin and only one file was there!!
It was 1.36gb with no room left for the other files.
I'm amazed.
I know if I choose a single file and the file is too big for the bin I get asked if I want to permanently delete it.
I would have thought that selecting several files would have the same result but no, they just get deleted.
More care to be taken in the future from me!!
Not that a couple of lost movies are going to make me want to end it all. :-D