First off, this isn't the right place for this kinda question. This forum is
for Microsoft Office, and microsoft's website hosts forums for other aspects
of microsoft software and development. In the future if you have this kinda
question, try finding the Overclocking Forms (run a search for it).
That being said, you probably can understand why it takes time for a file to
be copied - the data has to be read and written from one source and moved to
another. Not only that, though, but more importantly, the partition keeps a
LIST of all of the files in it, and when you copy a file onto the partition,
it writes down the name of the file, and where in memory it is stored.
For example, New Document1.doc is saved to block 1A55C... or whatever.
Deleting is slightly different though. When you delete a file, all that
happens is that it is taken out of the LIST of files. The file still exists
on the hard drive, for all intensive purposes, and you can download software
that helps you recover deleted files. The space that the file was using,
however, is now listed as EMPTY SPACE, and the next time you copy a file onto
that partition, it "might" copy over where the other file used to be.
The only real reason you'd want to completely delete a file when you delete
it is for security - destroying sensitive data. And for most people this
isn't a concern, so we can save ourselves a lot of time by simply deleting
the file from the table.
hth,
Nick
