Recycle Bin

I suppose the best way to think of the Recycle Bin is a safety net between the user and deletion disaster. I've been using computers for years and so far, knock on wood, I've yet to delete a file that I needed to go back and recover but tomorrow may be the day it happens. As long as the Recycle Bin is operational there is at least a chance of recovering the data if necessary.

The Default Settings

 When a clean installation of XP is performed the Recycle Bin will be the lone icon installed on the desktop. It's fully operational and ready for use with the default settings as shown in the screen captures below. To view the settings, right click the Recycle Bin icon and select Properties.

The Global tab applies to all drives on the system. By default XP uses one setting for all the drives, allocates 10% of the space on each drive for the Recycle Bin, and displays a confirmation dialog box whenever a file is deleted. As you can see below, if one setting is being used for all drives then all the information on the Local Disk tab is grayed out. Personally, I find the default amount of allocated disk space to be excessive and cut it way back but you should tailor it to your personal needs based on file sizes you normally delete. Also, the confirmation dialog is a supreme nuisance. Most of the time I turn off Recycle Bin completely, but even if I do leave it on I always turn off the confirmation dialog.

Confirm File Delete

I had a little problem when putting together this section. It's probably a case of my memory being faulty, but when I was doing some quick testing I created a file on the desktop and then used left click/drag and drop to place it in the Recycle Bin. I was expecting to see the Confirm File Delete dialog shown below but it didn't appear. OK, so then I tried right click/drag and drop. Same result; no confirmation. Then I went into Windows Explorer and tried the same procedures. Still no confirmation dialog.

Thoroughly confused by now, I stayed in Windows Explorer and made sure the files to be deleted were visible in the right pane. First I highlighted the file and then pressed the Delete key on the keyboard. The Confirm File Delete dialog box appeared. Deciding to press my luck I right clicked a file to be deleted and selected Delete from the context menu. Again the Confirm File Delete dialog box appeared.

So, maybe it's just me, but I could swear that the default behavior was to always show the Confirm File Delete dialog box. I've since retested on a few different systems and the results have been the same as what I outlined above. I'm sure I'll get plenty of feedback on this to let me know if I'm crazy or not, but test your own machine and see how the Confirm File Delete dialog box functions.

Inside the Recycle Bin

Open the Recycle Bin using a double click. All the files that have been selected for deletion will be waiting inside. There are quite a few different ways to display files inside a folder and Recycle Bin is no exception. The two screen captures below show Heirarchial and Task views of the same Recycle Bin. It would be easy to spend an hour going over all the different ways to handle files in the Recycle Bin, but here are the basics.

Once a file is in the Recycle Bin there are essentially two operations of interest; either restore the file to its original location or delete it from the Recycle Bin and it's gone forever.

If Heirarchial View is being used, either use the File Menu or the right click context menu on an individual or group of files to either Restore the file(s) to their previous location or to Delete them from the Recycle Bin. Restoring the files places them back where they were located before being sent to the Recycle Bin. Deleting the files from the Recycle Bin ends their lifespan on the system without any option to bring them back again.

If Task View is being used the same options in Heirarchial View are available and the Task views on the left of the window can be used. The operation descriptions in Task View will change depending on whether you have selected a single or multiple files.

Empty the Recycle Bin versus Delete

It's worth taking a minute to discuss the difference between Delete and Empty the Recycle Bin commands. Use Delete to selectively remove a single file or group of files from the Recycle Bin. The Empty the Recycle Bin command does just that; it automatically selects all the files contained in the bin and deletes them from the system.

This is the Confirm Multiple File Delete dialog that would appear if the two highlighted files were removed using the Delete command.

This is the Confirm Multiple File Delete dialog that would appear if the Empty the Recycle Bin command was selected. Notice that it makes no difference that the two files were already selected. All four files in the Recycle Bin will be deleted.