Lol just ten minutes ago I was deleting alot of game data off my PS3 and deleting some songs off my 360 when this thought came into my mind. Where does this stuff go?

A cyberspace landfield?

Edit: Nice sig

Silicon heaven

Lmao really makes you wonder lol

Off-topic, Your sig gets me hard
On-topic, I don't know.

You machine simply removes the memory pointer to the beginning of the memory sequence for the object that is saved.

That is a generic explanation and also why many things can be undeleted.

However, some deletes actually set all the memory bits to zero.

@ hotmoza: lmao same to yours, Desmond deserves answers dammit! It's ok I don't know either thats why I'm asking.

superchunk: WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER! Thats the best explanation Ive heard.

I think of it as being sort of like an abacus. All the little bits of information are arranged in a certain way - when something is really and truly deleted, the abacus' pieces are all pushed back to the default position.

You see, the internet isn't a truck...

As Superchunk already said, the data doesn't go anywhere.
The data itself is erased only after it's overwritten. Some formatting methods overwrite the data and some just remove the pointer data.

Huh, i didn't know about the overwrite thing. I figured the data was just voided.

That explains how the police are able to reconstruct illegal data from your harddrive, even if you think you've deleted it.