What happens to files I delete from my internal HD?

[hesson11]

I've made a bootable clone of my laptop's internal hard drive onto an external hard drive and have updated it periodically through Smart Update.

Now, I'd like to free up some disc space on my laptop's internal hard drive by trashing a few thousand old, old, old documents. So after I do this, the next time I run Smart Update will those files I deleted from my internal hard drive still remain on my bootable clone external drive so I can access them in the future if needed?

THANK YOU!
-Bob

[dnanian]

They'll be deleted, Bob. If you want to archive files, you should create a separate "archive" partition, and move them there...