Solved Where are my deleted files stored with a secondary drive?

[Marscaleb]

I have two hard drives in my computer. When I delete a file, it goes into the recycle bin in windows, so it can still be recovered, so at this point it still exists on my hard drive.
Are these deleted files stored on my C drive, or on their original drive?
If I delete a file from my D drive and it now rests in my recycle bin, does the file still exist on the D drive, or has it been copied to the C drive?
If I disconnect my D drive while there are still files in the Recycle Bin, do those delete files stay on the D drive or could they be "Recovered" form the C drive?

 

[LMiller7]

The physical storage of the recycle bin is in the $RECYCLE.BIN folder in the root of the drive. This is a hidden folder and by default will not be visible. When you delete a file it goes to the $RECYCLE.BIN folder on the drive where the file was deleted. This is important. A move operation on the same volume only requires updating the metadata in the folder structure and does not require moving the file data itself. This is very fast, even for large files. Moving a file from D: to C: requires transferring the file data and could take a lot of time.

The recycle bin on the desktop is a virtual folder that shows the contents of the $RECYCLE.BIN folders of all drives in one place. The basic principles have been the same from the early days of NT in 1993 all the way to Windows 11. The details have changed.

If I disconnect my D drive while there are still files in the Recycle Bin, do those delete files stay on the D drive or could they be "Recovered" form the C drive?

The deleted files will remain on the D: drive only.