The Mysterious Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin contains deleted files, to give you a chance to restore them if need be. It is a temporary stop-over before the file is deleted forever. It is identical to the “Trash Can” with Mac computers. If the drive space is low (default is 10% left) or if the Recycle bin becomes full, Windows deletes files from then bin that you deleted a long time ago, to make room for newly deleted files.

NOTE: if you use Shift-Delete, then the file is actually deleted and does not go to the Recycle Bin.

Whenever you delete a file, instead of actually being deleted – it is renamed with an archaic naming convention (described later) and then moved to the Recycle Bin. A hidden mapping file (named “Info2”) acts as a cross-reference so that Windows can continue to display the original file names. For example, here we have deleted two files from the D drive and the screenshots show the displayed name in Windows Explorer (the original file names) and the actual names in a DOS box:

The Recycle Bin is structured differently on FAT32 drives vs NTFS drives. However, in both cases, it is accessed and used identically – you open it by double-clicking the “Recycle Bin” icon on your desktop, and you click “File/Empty Recycle Bin” to clear it out and permanently delete the files that are there.

IMPORTANT – What Happens when you Delete a File:
Each drive has a folder at the root that “appears to contain” all files in the Recycle Bin. In Windows Explorer, each folder contains a “list” of all the files you have deleted from your system. This list shows up in Windows Explorer as if the folder contains the actual files – but each drive’s Recyled (Fat32) or Recycler (NTFS) folder only contains the files that have been deleted from that Drive !!! You can verify this in DOS – and you will also see the weird file names that are stored (explained later).

For example – if you have a cleared out Recycle Bin, and you delete one, 100 MB file from your D drive – it will show up in each Recycle (FAT32) or Recycler (NTFS) folder on every drive. But only the drive where it was deleted from, the D drive, will actually have the file stored !! The folders on the other drives will list the file as if they contain it – the “Type” column in Explorer does not even say “shortcut” – however, functionally they are just shortcuts.

Fat32 Drives Recycled Bin - composed of identical folders, one per drive, named "Recycle". Each folder lists the same set of all deleted files – but each folder only contains files deleted from that drive. The list shows the original file names, but the actual file names that are stored are different (you can view the actual file names in DOS).

NTFS Drives Recycle Bin - composed of identical folders, one per drive, named "Recycler". Each folder contains hidden folders with weird, long names. In DOS, you can see them with “Dir /ah” and you can CD down to them and then use “Dir” to see the contents. The same weird naming convention is used for the files!!! Each Recycler folder and it’s archive files list the same set of all deleted files – but they only contain files deleted from that drive. There are usually either 1, 2, or 3 archive files – I do not know why there is more than one. For example, currently my drive has 3 of these files:

You can view the contents of the NTFS Recycle Bin archive files in Windows Explorer by clicking on them in the left pane. Note that this archive lists files from my E drive (NTFS) and my G drive (FAT32). But it actually only contains the file from E drive, since this is the Recycler folder on E. The other file from G drive is just listed as a reference.

NOTE: oddly, each “S-1-5 . . . etc” file contains the exact same list of deleted files !!! So each archive appears to be identical – however, obviously, they do not replicate the same deleted file/s – so the drive only has ONE COPY of each deleted file from that drive only. The other deleted files listed are just references to deleted files stored on other drives

For systems with both FAT32 and NTFS drives, whenever you delete a file, again, it shows up in both the FAT32 Recycle folders, and the NTFS Recycler folders.

As you delete files they are renamed ansd then moved to the Recycled (Fat32) or Recycler (NTFS) folder. For example, on my Fat32 D drive - each successive file deleted is renamed and saved to the Recycled folder on "that drive".

The original file names are still retained in a cross-reference list, in a file named “Info2”. Even if you have Explorer set to show hidden files – it will never display the Info2 file !! You can, however, see it in DOS – cd to the Recycled folder and type “attrib -h inf*”, and then “dir”.

By convention, every file name starts with two letters, followed by a reference number, and then the extension:

Example – I deleted 3 files from D drive (tempa.jpg, tempb.jpg, tempc.jpg) and the same 3 files from F drive. In Windows Explorer, both D:\Recycled and F:\Recycled contain the following list:

When you delete folders, they are also saved to the Recycled folder but will show as saved folders and will have no extension.

Example - WinXP is on the D drive, and you delete two JPG image files and then one folder from the drive. Assume the Recycled folder contains files. The deletions will be saved in D:\Recycled as :

If Windows was on the C drive and they were deleted from the C drive then they would be moved to C:\Recycled and named:

Info2. For example the file name: C:\www.dbknox_faq.com\index.html would become Dc1.html (if it was the first file deleted on the partition).

Here is the DOS dir command on my own FAT32 folders (c:\Recycled and D:\Recycled) and my only NTFS drive folder (E:\Recycler):