Is the trashbox really trash?

[WE155]

   

Please forgive me but I am new to using a Terastation. This may sound like a dumb question but I need to make sure before I flush 120 gig of files out of the trashbox. The trashbox contains files that were deleted from my HS-DHTGL/R5 1.10 Terastation correct? The trashbox is not just pointers to live data files out on the drive that I don't really want deleted, are they?  The reason I ask is that there are a ton of zero-byte files (that could be pointers) and my boss doesn't remember deleting all the files that are in the trashbox, so I'm supposed to check before flushing them.

 

I read some of the posts in the 'solved' forum concerning the trashbox, and in particular there is a post "Buffalo Link Station will not recover disk space" posted on 1/23/09 that references zero-byte files that doesn't really answer the zero-byte file question posted.  There is also a reply by Rogere that indicates the Terastation will automatically flush trashbox files if you are trying to copy data to the Terastation that is larger than the available space (but smaller than the available space plus the trashbox space) in order to make room for the new data. My Terastation does not seem to work that way, is there a setting that enables that functionality?  Thanks in advance for any help.

[daoswald]

   

When you delete a file, the file will appear in the trashbox in a folder structure that imitates its original location.  For example:

 

Delete a file in share/hop/scotch. => File is removed from share/hop/scotch, and will now exist in share/trashbox/hop/scotch.

 

 

Behind the scenes what happens on any hard drive when you delete a file is that the file's name, path, and list of reserved clusters are unlinked from the physical clusters in use.  When that happens, the used space is essentially reclaimed and the file appears to be deleted, whether or not the physical file space has been overwritten.

 

So when it comes to the trashbox, it's not a stretch to conclude that the original file isn't rewritten, just that its filename and path information are altered so that it falls under the share/trashbox path instead of share/.  But when that does happen, the original path is unlinked, and the file is essentially deleted.

 

I don't know if my explanation helps or not..... clear as mud right?

[WE155]

   

Thanks for the response, and I understood perfectly. When a file gets deleted,  the filename is put in the trashbox and removed from the link-list in the Share folder. But the space  (which really isn't deleted) is still reserved, but now it's reserved in the trashbox cluster list. That's why a file can be 'undeleted' which is really just putting the filename back into the 'Shared' folder reserved cluster list. Space is not really reclaimed until you delete the file from the trashbox. But even then the data in those clusters is still there, the system just views it as space that can be written on.

 

Thanks again for the confirmation.  Consider this post as solved.