Assume I’ve opened a word document, written “My boss is a poopyhead!”, saved the file.
After changing my mind and deleting the .docx file via the Explorer window, how many other copies exist on my home PC?
I’ve been trying to figure this out, and found the following:
Some type of file that briefly exists in the same folder, probably a tmp (it had ~ in the name)
A copy in the recycle bin.
A copy in something called: Windows.old. I suspect this exists because I upgraded to Win10 a few days ago. But it’s keeping even my new files, not just the old OS.
Where else would a copy of my file end up? FWIW: Simple PC with a disk drive. No other drives or filesystems.
There’s also “restore points” and “previous versions”, but those require you to enable those disk protection features in Windows.
Presumably you don’t have other backup software active…
Also note that “empty recycle bin” does not actually permanently delete the file. It marks the directory entry as deleted, and adds the file contents disk space to “free space”. It may or may not get overwritten shortly or years from now by new data, depending on how busy your disk is.
Thanks, good point. I hadn’t thought about restore points. I knew that deleting a file was just re-allocating the space it occupied, but was just curious how many odd and ends the OS kept around for its purposes (that could be easily viewed by amateurs).
Using the “kind:=” option in searches is eye-opening isnt’ it? It’s amazing how much MS keeps around, and for how long.
You specified your home PC, but Windows could also be saving into the cloud. Microsoft likes to push its OneDrive storage and automatically enables it under Windows 10 and later unless you take specific steps to turn it off.
Well, unless you disable the notice, “One Drive” always gives a notice that, when you delete a file, you have deleted it from the Cloud and from the local machine. That should be it. My recycle bin is always empty because, if I deleted a file in the first place, why in the world would I want to save it in the recycle bin?
I’m a little confused by some of this. Does “cloud” = “OneDrive”? Are they the same thing, or is there another location I’m not looking at?
Secondly, are things being saved without my knowledge? The “OneDrive” selection is enabled in my Explorer file window, but I’ve assumed (so far) that nothing goes there unless I move it. I’ve experimented with it some, but have only put encrypted/protected files there. I’m curious if I’m missing some auto-save feature that’s running without my OK. I haven’t taken any specific steps to disable anything.
Also, there seems to be something called “Personal Vault” which I’m still figuring out. Thus far, I don’t see any files in OneDrive that weren’t put there by me. And they’re all encrypted before moving them there.
Thanks to everyone for your help. I’m not super-familiar with MS operating systems (beyond casual user).
OK, now things are getting weird. I just looked again, and there’s a bank document from our PC on OneDrive. Neither of us moved it, and it’s dated from back in 2015. There’s nothing personal, it’s just a blank form my wife had from our bank many years ago.
How in hell did that get there? It’s from an almost never-used subfolder from an old job (doesn’t even work there any more).
It’s frightening to see how much accumulated crap grows over the years. At one point someone probably did not disable to back up “my Documents”, and so it got copied to OneDrive. I don’t know exactly how One Drive works (I disable it when I can) but I presume if you connect OneDrive to a new computer, but that old folder/doc does not exist (or get copied to) on the new computer, then you will never delete it locally, so it never gets deleted on One Drive. I’m on my third computer since 2015, but I tend to copy the assorted data files - My Documents, Music, Email PST files, etc. - wholesale to the new computer, since each computer has progressively larger disk space.
The cloud refers to servers and services on the Internet. When you view a YouTube video, listen to Spotify, or watch a movie on Netflix, you’re using the cloud. OneDrive is Microsoft’s file storage service on the cloud. Apple has their own as does Google. There are many others, which you mostly have to pay for.
If you’ve looked at your OneDrive partition and only seen files that you’ve specifically put there, then likely you’re safe. Maybe.
OK Thanks. That’s the part I want to be sure about. OneDrive is storage external to my PC. I wasn’t sure, since I’m new to Windows 10 and this wasn’t a feature on 8.1.
Yeah. It’s confusing right now. I’m trying to be sure about this, and have moved a few files into onedrive for a couple of days… Deleted them this morning as a sort of experiment. I want to see if they stay “deleted”, or if MS helpfully decides I need these routinely backed up and grabs them for me. For my own good, yanno. Also, I’ll make some random changes to the original on my C: drive, just to see if I’m inadvertently triggering their backup “help”.
The invasive nature of modern corporations is becoming a real problem, imo.
Same here, except this time. It’s the first time I’ve just updated to new OS. I have so much space left on the drive, and little need for extra horsepower, that the old PC suits fine.
IIRC, I’ve gone from XP to 8.1, skipping 7 and vista along the way. I would’ve skipped 10 and gone to Windows 11, but my PC doesn’t have the TPM chip that (I think) is required for 11.
I’ve spent the majority of my working life in the *nix environment, and wanted to chuck the whole MS world for SUSE. I put Ubuntu on a laptop as an intro, but my spouse didn’t like LibreOffice, preferring to stay with the familiar. So here we are – she’s happy and I’m trying to navigate around through Cygwin. Sigh.
I make a point of getting Windows Pro computers. First, it usually comes on the more powerful computers, and second it includes Hyper-V capabilities in case you want to also mess with Ubuntu, SUSE, et ceterix…
Like everything else mechanical, electronic, or in between - it makes a whole bunch of assumptions that may not be valid. (Much like I found my iPhone camera defaults to HEIC not JPG, so some format that nobody uses except Apple - but hey, you really want this, don’t you? And LIVE mini-movies, not snapshots)
If the person appears to move for about half a second - yes, they have LIVE turned on for the iPhone camera. Not sure if Android does the same. If I wanted a movie instead of a JPG then I would have shot a movie.