"Recycle" vs "Recycler"

mike_mccue


I've been doing a lot of archiving and consolidation of back ups and have been swapping out 8 different external hard drives while trying to do it.


I've noticed that some of the external hard drives now have two kinds of recycle bins?

Is this just a legacy from using the drives on a variety of operating systems?

Is it possible to delete one of them?



Thanks.



best regards,
mike
 

It's possible.
 
But don't do it.
 
They are both protected (and normally hidden) System files and part of the Recycle bin system on Windows.

Hey, I'm gonna ask questions to which I already know the answer...
 
How cool would that be?...
 
Yep it's possible, but I think I wont do it.

mike_mccue


Does anyone know what happens if you delete the Recycler file?


Thanks.



best regards,
mike

Try it and report back.
 
That way you'll be helping everyone else that gets confronted by this dilemma.
 
Chances are it will just get rebuilt if you've got NTFS partitions.

Hi Mike,

I've never seen anything named 'Recycler', but I have seen the hidden recycling bin icon on my 500GB USB External HDD.

I deleted it and nothing happened.

Every situation is different though and I'd feel bad if you deleted yours and fried your HDD. :(

It seems that those hidden Recycling bins on external drives are pretty much useless to the end user because I've never seen a recycling bin icon that I could access to restore a file back to the External HDD that I had deleted.

Could be how I have it set up though?

Gotta go now. Have a good day everyone.

It will only appear if you have deleted something from that drive via the Recycle bin when like I say it will get rebuilt.
 
What you can delete without fear is any instances that are not related to the ID for your profile on your machine, you won't be able to delete the one for you current ID because it will be locked.
 
So if you have more than one entry and your are the only person ever on that machine (i.e you don't have other acounts on it), and you don't use a multi/dual boot setup then deleting anything that is deletable in the $Recycle.bin folders on each drive will be safe to do as sometimes IDs will linger from an older OS that may have as one time been accessing the drives for example.
 
But hey Mike what do I know?
 
Ignoring people makes you seem mean spirited especially when they are trying to help.

Also if these file are a seeming distraction why not recheck the Windows 7 default of 'Do not show protected operating system files'.  Then you'll never see them.
 
You'll find that switch under Tools/Folder Options/View.
 
 

I keep hidden files in view, as well as extensions but only show system files when I'm suspecting something's up or performing some irregular maintainence like you are doing currently.
 
It's a fair choice to keep them in view if you don't mind the distraction during normal use.
 
I find the '.ini' files on the Desktop enough of a distraction when the system files are in view, so I leave that option as per default (hidden).

craigb


I've found if you delete ALL the files on a hard drive you have more room available.

HTH.

Kewl, I'll do that righ

Jonbouy


Hey Craig it worked.
 
I ran into a few unforeseen issues though.

Like not being able to read all of Bapu's unfunny posts offline?  Ya, I had that issue too... 
 
(Good thing I have his DVD Series!)