What happens to hard deleted files?

[omkar]

I am using Alfreso 4.2 on JBoss and Redhat OS. Since Alfresco is a version control system, what happens to hard deleted files? I have observed that even if I remove huge files from Alfresco web console and clean it from the "Manage Deleted Items", then still the space does not get free on the drive. When I delete files, they appear in "Manage Deleted Items" on web-console, but do not appear in "contentstore.deleted" folder ever.
Do the files and their metadata exists in some hidden form (and occupy space) even after hard delete?
So can someone tell me if I permanently hard delete huge files that are not needed, will the free space on the server increase?

Regards,
Omkar V. Kulkarni.

[mrogers]

The content store cleaner should run each night and remove any orphaned (un-needed) files.

[omkar]

Hi mrogers. When I delete files from Alfresco they do not appear in the ".deleted" folder. I am not sure why this happens. But if the contents are not residing in the ".deleted" folder after deleting, then even if we run content store cleaner, it will not help. Request you to help if I can do some more steps.

Regards,
   Omkar V> Kulkarni.