HI guys I want to know if I delete a file that is in my wastebin does the file data still exist on my drive (I’m only using one main drive, nothing external) and is it recoverable either through manjaro’s own features or some third party application similar to how if a file is deleted from the recycle bin in windows it still technically exists on the drive but just isn’t accessible. I’m asking this for security and safety reasons. Ideally I’d like all information I decide to delete to be truly deleted permanently. Also if information already deleted in the wastebin does still on my drive is there a way to permanently remove it?
Thanks in advance.
There are multiple “wastebin” variants, depending on the file manager (Thunar, pcmanfm, Nautilus, Nemo, Dolphin, etc.).
Some will put the files that you delete into ~/.Trash-1000 (the number being your user id), or into ~/.local/share/Trash, or somewhere else.
If you want to delete it “permanently”, I guess for most file managers, you can select “Move to Trash” or “Delete” (maybe with the Shift button pressed during clicking).
Then, on the terminal, there is the rm command, which will delete the file and not put it into some kind of trash folder.
However, if you actually delete a file, depending on your file system, the bits on the disk will not be “removed” but they are regarded as free, which means the next time you save a file, the bits from the removed file might be overwritten.
There are tools like shred that overwrite the bits directly on the disk, however, with SSDs that is not reliable.