Bill,
So, it may actually be recoverable for some unspecified amount of time using the right tools.
It is indeed. I've pieced files back together sector by sector myself in the past.
DOS (many other systems work in a similar way) stores both a directory and a file-allocation table (FAT) on the disk.
The directory holds details of the filenames, date/time stamps, and so on, plus a pointer to the first sector for the file. The FAT then acts as a linked list, pointing to the next sector, then the next, and so on.
Deleting a file erases the directory entry and marks all those sectors as free in the FAT. Next time a new file has to be created on the disk, the operating systsm selects free sectors based on the entries in the FAT.
