How to empty $RECYCLE.BIN

Today we’re going to talk about what to do if your hard drive (typically an external hard drive) is showing less use-able space than there should be.

When I say your hard drive is showing less use-able space than there should be, I do not mean your 20Gb drive shows 18.5Gb out of the box, that is a different subject. What I am talking about is when your 20Gb hard drive has 1 folder on it that is 5Gb in size yet you are told you only have 10mb remaining of available space!? What tends to happen is your hard drive has a special folder called “$RECYCLE.BIN” which is put on the hard drive to act much like your computers Recycle Bin works. When you delete a file from a hard drive it goes to that hard drives Recycle Bin. Now on your computers primary hard drive when you delete something, it moves it to the Recycle Bin where you can then remove it by Right Clicking the Recycle Bin icon and choosing “Empty Recycle Bin” at which point the memory that was storing those files becomes available to store new data to. When you delete a file from your external hard drive a similar action takes place. The file moves from the directory you stored it to the hard drives “$RECYCLE.BIN”.  The problem I have run into is that this Recycle Bin, unlike the one on your computers primary hard drive, does not have an option to empty from so all our deleted files accumulate and continue taking up space.

The Solution:

I use the portable version of WinDirStat (I am a portable app fan, though the actual installation of the program would work as well). You can download the portable version here: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/windirstat_portable

After you install this program (because its portable it can be installed to your primary hard drive or a thumb drive) you’ll want to launch it. When the program first runs it will list all detected hard drives and storage devices and ask you to select one.

When you have chosen the drive you want to examine it will begin looking at the data on the drive and give you a list of what folders are on the drive (both hidden, system, and visible) and tell you what if any amount of data it contains. (It shows a little pac-man icon eating away, don’t let that freak you out it is just to show something is loading).

Once the program has loaded the statistics for the drive it will display what directories are using how much memory, including our $RECYCLE.BIN which is what we’re after. If your $RECYCLE.BIN shows more than a couple megabytes it is worth looking at what files it is holding onto and deciding whether you want to restore them or delete them and open up that space. You navigate the folder by double clicking $RECYCLE.BIN or clicking the plus sign at its sign to expand the folder. Within $RECYCLE.BIN  we have lots of sub-folders with various names; we are looking for a sub-folder that still shows significant storage being used. When you find a sub-folder worth investigating click on the icon or use the Plus sign to expand the folder and see what its contents are. 

Once you have examined the various files and folders your $RECYCLE.BIN has held onto, you can choose if you want to delete them off the drive or move them somewhere else. To delete a file you’ll right click the file of interest and choose “Delete (move to recycle.bin)” or “Delete (no way to undelete!)”. I use the second option in order to bypass the series of prompts asking if I am sure about deleting the file(s) but you can use which ever you prefer.

After you have chosen to delete any files and/or folders you can now notice that the $RECYCLE.BIN folder has become smaller which means we have finally freed up the space on our drive again.

Hope this can help you get back some space on your drives.