Vtgyjfy

Since you are talking about "saving the file", then file will not be edited in-place on disk.

With a file in a usual filesystem, there are two things to consider. There is the directory entry, and then there is the actual file data somewhere on the disk.

When you edit a file in a normal editor, it will load the file data into RAM, and any editing will just happen on that copy of the data. Then when you save the file, there are basically two options:

Option 1: the original file is renamed, so both the original directory entry and the original data will remain on the disk. The rename might for example change file suffix to .bak (removing any previous .bak file, usually). Then a new file is created and the data from memory is written there.

Option 2: the original directory entry is modified so the file is truncated to 0 length. The area on disk used for file data will be marked as unused, but the old file contents will remain on disk until they are overwritten. Then new data is written. In this case the directory entry remains, just the data it points to is changed.

There are a few possible variations, a common one being, the edited data is first stored to temporary file, so if your computer crashes at this point, the original file will likely not be damaged. Then the original file is deleted and the new file renamed with the correct name. Or, the original file could just be deleted before writing the new one.

So your theory 1 is close to what most editors do.

Then there are special cases. The most obvious one is a disk editor, which allows reading and overwriting bytes directly on disk. Another might be a database file, where records might be fixed size, so it's easy to just overwrite a record. But data can't be appended in the middle of a file, and therefore editing text files or any other files where the length of the data in the middle of the file commonly changes, these tricks can't really be used.

So your theory 2 is possible in some cases, but normal text editors and such don't do it.

Historically, drives were directly controlled by the OS, which in turn controlled by the application. In that context, Theory 2 was the primary way PCs worked. the OS specified a physical location to put data, and it had full control over this process. As a result, early file systems had a "bad sector" table, so after your data was lost, the computer could tell you the data was lost and mark the sector as unusable to avoid more data loss. Disk scans and defragmentation was the order of the day.

However, after the turn of the century, we moved to LBA, so now the OS would simply reference the "logical" block it wanted to read or write to. The hard drive itself now had the intelligence to shuffle around data behind the OS's back without it noticing. This meant better reliability, since sectors that failed to verify could simply be moved to a new physical location without affecting the OS's knowledge of where that data was located.

In modern hardware, the "platter" disk drives typically just overwrite whatever was there before with the new incoming data, and optionally remaps the LBA if the sector looks like it might not retain the data (the sector is damaged or worn). "Flash" drives typically erase the old cells and then write data to new cells, a process known as wear-leveling.

In both cases, this is possible because there is always unused capacity beyond the reported value. This overprovisioning allows the drive to have a longer usable life than the rather unreliable technology of the previous century's technology. The LBA mode enables the physical medium to be abstracted from the OS so that the drive itself could take whatever measures the drive thinks is necessary to prevent data loss.

At the application level, you typically open a file in "WRITE" mode, which tells the OS to clear the file ("delete" the contents, but not the file itself), then write new data. All of this is buffered at the OS level, then "flushed" to the drive, which makes the requested changes.

Given that information, Theory 1 is what technically happens at the application programming level, at least by default, as there is also a "write with append" mode to avoid clearing the file contents. The OS itself will present the changes to be made more like Theory 2, but abstracted via LBA. The drive itself will then probably do something that's a mix of Theory 1 and Theory 2.

Yep. It's complicated, and very part-manufacturer/OS-developer/application-developer dependent. However, all of this complexity is aimed at making data storage more reliable while improving power usage/battery life.

Depends. AFAIK Microsoft Word, when saving .doc (not .docx) files with Fast save options enabled, appends changes made to document since last save do existing file.

Generally speaking, A computer will allocate the memory where the original file resides as 'deleted', but all this really means is that it won't show up in your file browser anymore, and the cells in the memory where it was written are allowed to be overwritten in future.

As to whether the new file is written into the same place is down to a number of factors, primarily the software you are using and how it is designed to make use of the memory.

Hopefully this isn't redundant, a little extra info/background.

The PC doesn't usually have much control over how a file is edited, it's the application that does it.

A few examples of how some apps might handle editing:

Notepad loads the entire document into memory and then saves the whole thing over your original document (or a new one you specify).

Nearly all other small editors will save a "new" file as you edit and then copy it over your original document deleting it when you "save".

Large Document editors that you might use to edit a book tend to read/modify a section of a document because they can edit documents bigger than memory. These may actually edit the document "In place". They might re-write one page and leave the rest alone. These often have a more complex indexed on-disk representation than a simple .txt file would to allow this behavior.

The large editors might also just save temporary files with "updates" to your original document. When you do your final save it can merge them all in and re-write your document.

Most editors can be configured to leave the existing version untouched and create a new one with your changes (retain old versions).

As to the part of your question regarding what a "PC" does, some operating systems will remember every version of a file and always create a new one. This is pretty rare these days but I remember old "Mini Computers" (What we'd now call mainframes) where every file had a version at the end like "File.text.1" and it would add to the version every time you edited it. This kind of behavior would better apply to something like a tape drive or CD rom where overwriting the old version was completely impractical.

2 is not impossible, but it is stupid for various reasons.

A well-written text file editor will:

1. Write a file with a different name and the new contents. If the original was myfile.txt, the new one might be myfile.txt.new
   


2. Provided 1. succeeded, rename the original to a backup file, say myfile.txt~
   


3. Rename the new file to the original name myfile.txt
   


4. If everything has succeeded, remove the backup file. Many editors leave it anyway, so the user can recover if he/she soon works out that what he/she did with the editor was not what he/she wanted to do.

If the computer crashes or runs out of space on the disk during the above, there is not a situation where both the old and the new files are lost or only partially saved.

Short answer

Highly depends on your editor, underlying software/drivers, storage.

Paranoiac answer

Can be recoverable unless you remove it permanently.

Long answer

There is missing information in your question (software, hardware, etc), so instead of answering myself I will help you answer your question yourself.

It depends on few factors:

1. Editor: If the editor software replaces the blocks of the same file, then it may get rewritten. And this may also be depended on editor settings and file types. Note that the word may was made italic. Even when editor rewrites the file, it still can remain untouched (read the next points).




2. Underlying software/drivers/file system: File will remain untouched if there are other software/drivers underneath that protect initial file from being overwritten. Those types of software include versioning systems, virtual differential disks, some backup software. An example is Git, which will keep the original file blocks and will create new file that holds the modified blocks.



3. 
   

   Storage:

   
   
   
   
   

   • Storage itself can write changed blocks on a new sector, and mark old blocks as "free". Then the file will physically remain on the storage (and is recoverable), unless it gets overwritten by other file. Example is modern SSD storage, which may do it on a hardware level.

   
   

   • There are ways to recover data from a typical mechanical HDD's magnetic discs even when the data was overwritten. And there are specialized companies in it.

   
   
   
   

So if you want to get concrete answer whether your file will be deleted or not, you must also tell what editor, backup/VCS software/hardware and storage you use. If I missed any point, feel free to edit the answer.

How to make sure that the deleted file is actually deleted from the storage?

This is probably the next question that you will question yourself. Well there are many software/hardware solutions. Since SuperUser is not for promoting software/hardware, instead of telling names I will tell you how to find them: search for keywords "permanently delete file". For more exact matches mention your OS, hard drive type, or other info you have.

One behavior that no one has mentioned yet is a relevant behavior of some versions of MS Windows operating systems is also related to the filesystem in use.

The behavior works like this: When you rename or delete a file, if you create (re-create) a (new) file with the same name within 15 seconds of when the original file was deleted (or renamed), the creation date/timestamp is copied from the original file. Essentially, the new file "becomes" the old/original file.

In this case, it really doesn't matter if the application saves the changes to the file by your method #1: making a new file with the same name, or by your method #2: edit/update the file in place (file not deleted). Either way, the final file looks in (nearly) every way, like the original file. The only thing is, it will likely occupy different physical drive space (clusters/sectors) and the directory entry for the file will likely be in a different location.

As I said, this is a behavior of some versions of MS Windows/filesystems. I don't know which version of Windows and which filesystem this started on, and if it is still the behavior of more recent versions. If I had to guess I'd say it was introduced on Windows NT and Windows XP and is still the behavior of Windows 10, and (still a guess) the behavior requires a Fat32 or NTFS (and perhaps newer) filesystem.