Digging Into Details of Windows Recycle Bin

One of the desktop icons that appear after Windows is installed is the Recycle Bin. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Microsoft programmers were no doubt thinking about the Apple Mac operating system, which includes a desktop Trash Can icon, when they designed the Recycle Bin. When you drag and drop a file or folder onto the Recycle Bin icon, you are removing it.

But the material hasn’t been deleted. Windows merely stores it in the Recycle Bin. You can review any deleted file or folder by double-clicking the Recycle Bin. Once it’s open, a list of deleted files and folders appears. Right-click on any of them and then click on Properties. The Recycle Bin displays information about that file or folder, including the date the file or folder was created, the date you deleted it and its origin, size and type.

You can restore any file or folder in the Recycle Bin by right-clicking it and then clicking Restore. The file or folder you are working with will disappear from the Recycle Bin and reappear in the place from which you deleted it.

To permanently delete everything in the Recycle Bin, right-click the Recycle Bin icon and then click Empty Recycle Bin. You will then see a warning message that says, “Are you sure you want to delete these . . . items”? Clicking Yes deletes everything in the Recycle Bin.

If your computer uses Windows ME, you can go back in time and recover deleted files and folders. A commercial software program called GoBack will do the same thing for PCs using Windows 98.

On other systems, recovering files or folders that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin is something best left to data recovery experts such as Irvine-based Data Mechanix. These folks can, in most cases, restore lost files and folders and transfer the missing data to a CD-ROM. The trick here is to contact data recovery specialists as soon as you discover the loss of invaluable data.

There might be times when you know that the file or folder you are about to delete should be immediately deleted and not stored in the Recycle Bin. You can do this by holding down the Shift key as you drag and drop it onto the Recycle Bin icon. This procedure bypasses the Recycle Bin and deletes the file or folder from the hard drive. It’s gone, period.

Note here that if you delete a file while in the DOS mode, that file is gone. It’s not available in the Recycle Bin.

You should know that by default, the Recycle Bin is set to occupy 10% of your hard drive. That means that if you have a 40-gigabyte hard drive, 4 GB are reserved for the Recycle Bin. You can remedy the situation by right-clicking the Recycle Bin icon and then clicking Properties. You will see a sliding switch set at 10%. Click the vertical bar and drag it to the left. When you reach the 1% mark, release the mouse button and click OK. You have now freed up 90% of the disk space formerly reserved for the Recycle Bin.

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Jeff Levy hosts the “On Computers” radio talk show from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on KFI-AM (640).