Emptying trash bin slows down PC

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

When I empty the trash bin on my computer (be it Linux or windows), the data still exists, so I was told. I read that after emptying the trash bin, an Index of some kind is removed. That's it. The data itself still exists. If I have a computer, where over years of usage, files were only deleted via emptying the trash bin, is there a way to remove the (hidden) files? Because I assume the the performance (with respect to storage device) still suffers, even if I empty my trash bin... Is there a "native" way? Not using third party programs. I only know of the purge command in Linux.

manpreet 2 years ago

The deleted files don't affect performance. The trash bin isn't really even a deletion. That just hides the file in a special folder. When you empty the trash bin, it deletes the files. But as you noted, deletion doesn't remove the contents, it just removes the information for finding the content, making those areas of the drive available for reuse. When there is data to be stored in that location later, it doesn't make any difference that your old file was previously in that space; the space just gets over-written.

If anything can potentially slow down the drive, it's the files stored there, not the deleted stuff. As the drive gets full, the space to store new files becomes pockets of space available from deleted files scattered around the drive. Large new files end up stored in fragments in different locations. If that becomes extensive, retrieving the information can take longer than if the file is one contiguous item. That's not an issue with an SSD because the data is accessed at full speed regardless of where it is or whether it's fragmented. But a hard drive can waste time moving the head to the different locations and waiting for the right part of the platter to spin into place.

When there is extensive fragmentation on a hard drive, the drive can be defragmented to speed things up. But doing that isn't recommended unless the fragmentation is extensive.