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.
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