Recycle Bin Size and Storage

Topic

New Reply

There was a question on Facebook about the Windows recycle bin and if emptying it will save any space on your hard drive. I answered with, “Emptying the recycling bin will not save space. It is a fix size and when it gets full, Windows will remove enough of the first files that were put in there to make room for the files you are deleting now. It works on a FIFO (first in, first out) system.” Does it work like a dynamic file or like a fixed size file where the size allocated is always marked as “reserved” and is NOT included in your available hard drive size?

Reply | Quote

Replies

If you are having to clear the bin to make space you need a bigger disk. (Not what you asked…)

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

Paul T wrote:

If you are having to clear the bin to make space you need a bigger disk. (Not what you asked…)

Clearing the bin does not increase free disk space (as stated by OP).

Dr_Mike wrote:

Does it work like a dynamic file or like a fixed size file where the size allocated is always marked as “reserved” and is NOT included in your available hard drive size?

The latter.

Reply | Quote

b wrote:

Paul T wrote:

If you are having to clear the bin to make space you need a bigger disk. (Not what you asked…)

Clearing the bin does not increase free disk space (as stated by OP).

Dr_Mike wrote:

Does it work like a dynamic file or like a fixed size file where the size allocated is always marked as “reserved” and is NOT included in your available hard drive size?

The latter.

I am simply curious if you can point me to information to confirm this? I did a search of Microsoft’s site and of the Windows Internal part 1 and I couldn’t find any documents explaining the Recycle Bin. My ancient experience was that the file would be counted against free space until it was removed from the bin. The file simply had a marker in the Block Allocation Map to hide it. When the bin was cleared, the BAM was updated to reflect free space. Granted this is not based on NTFS or anything newer. I want to understand how the recycle bin works if you can point me to information.

Reply | Quote

How to Change Maximum Storage Size for Recycle Bin in Windows 10

..If you have multiple hard drives, partitions, or an external hard drive connected to your PC, each location will have its own $Recycle.Bin and Recycle Bin settings…

The Recycle Bin will store deleted files until the maximum storage size for that Recycle Bin location has been reached. When this happens the Recycle Bin will automatically permanently delete (empty) older files in the Recycle Bin location to make room for the newer deleted files…

Right click or press and hold on the Recycle Bin, and click/tap on Properties.

Select the Recycle Bin location for the drive (ex: C ) at the top you want to change the maximum storage size for.

Select (dot) Custom size, set the maximum size in MB (1024 MB = 1 GB) for storage you want, and click/tap on Apply

Repeat step 2 above if you have another Recycle Bin location you want to change the maximum storage size for

When finished, click/tap on OK.

Reply | Quote

Roxbury51 wrote:

I want to understand how the recycle bin works

Ok, here’s what I discovered from real-world testing on Windows 10 22H2.

First, I copied a 1.34 GB (1,444,003,840 bytes) video file I’ve been working on to my secondary drive.

Here’s the properties with the file in place on that drive.

Here’s the properties after I deleted it into the Recycle Bin.

And here’s the properties after I emptied the Recycle Bin.

As you can see, before emptying the Recycle Bin, it still counted as ““used space” but, after emptying the Recycle Bin, its “used space” changed to “free space“.

FYI, the Recycle Bin for my secondary drive is set for a “maximum size” of 26467 MB using the procedure pointed out by @Alex5723.

After I deleted the file but before I emptied the Recycle Bin, the actual $RECYCLE.BIN folder on that drive was 1.34 GB (1,444,003,840 bytes) in size.

Once I emptied the Recycle Bin, the $RECYCLE.BIN folder was only 129 bytes.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Alex5723, satrow, NaNoNyMouse

Reply | Quote