deletion

n. The process of removing or eliminating information, especially the process of marking information to be removed during editing. ComputingThe process of removing the link between the directory and the data, allowing the space used by the data to be overwritten.

Notes

Deletion2 does not necessarily make data unreadable. The original information may remain intact and, if not overwritten, could be recovered using special software tools. Some software applications make it possible to undelete information and delay overwriting deleted information as long as possible to maximize the possibility of recovering deleted information. Deletion is distinguished from erasing, in which data is made unreadable by overwriting the areas containing the information.

Citations

Sedona Conference 2014, 319–320Deletion: The process whereby data is removed from active files and other data storage structures on computers and rendered more inaccessible except through the use of special data recovery tools designed to recover deleted data. Deletion occurs on several levels on modern computer systems: (a) File level deletion renders the file inaccessible to the operating system and normal application programs and marks the storage space occupied by the file's directory entry and contents as free and available to reuse for data storage; (b) Record level deletion occurs when a record is rendered inaccessible to a database management system (DBMS) (usually marking the record storage space as available for reuse by the DBMS, although in some cases the space is never reused until the database is compacted) and is also characteristic of many email systems; and (c) Byte level deletion occurs when text or other information is deleted from the file content (such as the deletion of text from a word processing file); such deletion may render the deleted data inaccessible to the application intended to be used in processing the file, but may not actually remove the data from the file's content until a process such as compaction or rewriting of the file causes the deleted data to be overwritten.