I thought I installed Subversion years ago on my local PC, as well as TortoiseSVN. I just went looking and could not find any subversion folder, yet I can still check in/out of my repository with TortoiseSVN! No subversion or svn in services or in windows task manager. How the heck do I find it - or do I need it? I always thought I did? Confused!
If I don't need it - is it then (subversion) only used to give access to other machines?
TortoiseSVN is a complete SVN client by itself, it doesn't need or use the command line version, just like the command line version does not need TSVN to function.
P.S. This question is more suited for superuser or one of the other sites in the network.
TortoiseSVN does not require the subversion binaries, as the FAQ states.
TortoiseSVN has subversion within it. Lets say you want to have a repository in D drive of your system. Now TortoiseSVN integrates within your right click menu. So create a Folder say svn_repository and within that right click and select option of creating a repository here.
It will create the repository. and SVN repo browser from the right click menu will give you full paths of the repository which can be checked in/out.