jaylach wrote:
It is quite normal that a removable drive may not ask for confirmation when deleting a file. This can be controlled on a drive by drive basis in Windows but I have no idea as to on a Chromebook as it is running Google's OS, not Windows. In my case, on my main system, I have it set just the opposite. Deleting a file on an internal drive will not trigger the confirmation dialog but the dialog will be triggered on an external drive.
And, yes, the files are probably still intact on the external drive but not exactly the same as changing a file attribute to hidden. When a file attribute is changed to hidden it just isn't seen in File Explorer but can still be accessed by specific software associated with the file. The system still sees the file as valid and taking drive space.
When a file is deleted it is similar to being hidden but there is no access to the file at all. All that really happens is that a 'flag' is set on the file saying that it has been deleted but it is still actually present. The difference is that a deleted file can be overwritten and truly lost as the system now thinks that the space on the drive used by the deleted file is free space where a hidden file can't be overwritten as the system still knows that the file is taking the drive space. This is why you should never use the hard drive (if possible) when you accidentally delete a file. As long as the deleted file is not overwritten it can usually be recovered by data recovery software. All this software really does is to change the flag on the file saying it is deleted to it not being deleted.
I must have done something wrong because when I tried to use that USB drive again, it said that I must format it before I can use it, also stating that all information on the drive would be lost. Since I had no choice, I formatted the drive and when I opened it, nothing was there.....which was not true. It is a 64gb drive and when I checked the properties, it only showed 32gb available and 31.9gb used, which of course must mean that there is a lot of stuff on the drive but I just cant see it, right?
Also will add that all of this was done on my Windows 7 pro computer.