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A blank disc or a blank memory space needs to be addressed so that each memory cell or the smallest memory that, that disc or memory space can accommodate, can be found using the unique address. Formatting divides the entire memory of the device into sectors or cells which can be addressed uniquely. Since the address of each memory unit is changed to a new one, the previous data becomes inaccessible hence it looks like we have in fact deleted the data.
Whereas while deleting we just mark the address where the data lies as a blank space. Hence we are not deleting the data, just marking the space as available for the next writing.
You will notice that it takes the almost same amount of time to delete a 1GB of single file and a 4KB of single file. But it takes a large amount of time to delete a folder with thousands of files in it.
Formatting a drive changes its values to zero and sets of the directory for a particular file format (NTFS FAT32, ect). Deleting a file simply removes it from the directory and does not actually erase the data until that section of the drive is used for other data.
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FranWhen you delete files they are still on your hard drive however the pointer to the file(s) has been removed... Think of it as a table of contents.. Your computer uses this data on your hard drive as its method to quickly locate files on the hard drive plates and load them.
When you format a drive you are actually deleting the data, all of it. Now there are ways because a standard hard drive is magnetic media to recover this data unless you do a secure delete. A secure delete will delete the data, write new data to that spot on the drive and delete; and repeat a number of times.
The magnetic fingerprint left behind at that point is now unreadable.
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