From operation system perspective, your deleted files should be still in the Recycle Bin. The regular DELETE will not permanently delete files but move the files to the Recycle Bin.
Sorry to revive this old post. But I am having the same problem here with ArcMap / ArcCatalog 10.3.1. The raster was stored in SDE Geodatabase (SQL Server) previously, and I deleted it from ArcCatalog. It should have released around 50 GB HDD space. The server does not have Recycle bin activated, it is on Windows Server 2012 R2. And I see the .mdf file itself still have that 50GB data (originally it was only around 2GB ). So I assume it was not moved to anywhere (to recycle bin or somewhere).
Please help for solution for this.
Did you try to Shrink the Database or the Data\Log files individually? Does that release the space?
Hi Asrujit, you are a legend. It works. If you live near my place, I will treat you as many pizza as you want.
Great! As many Pizzas as you want...interesting...