External hard drive has recycle bin--how to access?

If all drives have a common recycle bin, then why doesn't the recycle bin have a file I just deleted from my hard drive?

It uses the Desktop Recycle Bin, regardless of the partition, or drive ID, physical location. That is only for standard deletion. That moves the file to the recycle bin. The more powerful Shift and Delete key option superimposes complete deletion. There is no recycle bin file.

I want to know , if i have deleted files from WD external drive ,that move to recycle bin and sounds they dont show on desktop recycle bin unless hard is connected ,so what about using same external hard on another laptop!!! Would be able to see the deleted files or restor them! And would they be accessabl on another laptop even in external hard's recycle bin or desktop one!

These files are still on the drive, and (depending on the settings, as you can read below) might show up on another PC or not.
Why not try yourself how it is with you?

Since they are on the drive, you can see and copy them from Linux, but it's possible they lost their original name.

The default may be set to one Recycle Bin for all drives. That does NOT mean that this is physically the case. Read on:

1. if you disconnect an external drive before it is finished processing, then the Recycle Bin folders on that drive may become detached from the host machine's Recycle Bin and cannot be accessed thereafter. You will then end up with "deleted" files in Recycle Bin folders on the external drive which are STILL USING SPACE on the external drive, AND with NO ACCESS from the host or any other machine.

2. If you manually configure each drives Recycle Bin Properties seperately, then each drive will have it's own Recycle Bin with varying percentages of teach drive being used.

Coryphaeus' reply sums it up nicely: "All drives connected to a PC use a common recycle bin, although the "deleted" data still resides on the original drive."

Windows only has one Recycle Bin. However, the Recycle Bin is not a folder in and of itself; it is a virtual folder that simply displays all recoverable files previously deleted from currently-mapped storage devices. Thus, you are correct that the files are actually stored in hidden system folders on the respective drives, and that occasional glitches can occur such that the files remain but do not appear in the Recycle Bin. Nevertheless, those are known as recycler folders, not the unified Recycle Bin, which Coryphaeus alluded to in his original reply over four years ago. And, just to be clear, those individual recycler folders exist, and are used, regardless of whether you choose to manage the drives' maximum allocation independently.

John


P.S. I have pruned this thread so that the original discussion is not overshadowed by today's dispute.

Hey luap_42 .
Thank you so much for your detailed answer! I've looked up this info everywhere but I couldn`t find and I felt totally lost and frustrated that I could do nothing about the deleted files which occupied my external HDD.
Many thanks

Hello Luap_42

I have this exact problem, except that my Iomega is specifically a Mac EHB.

I do have VMWare, but since it it Mac formatted, this detailed process won't apply to me. Do you have ANY suggestions on how to achieve the same end solution of emptying the detached Trash files from the EHD using Terminal Mac commands? My Time capsule is enroute, as I recently moved back to the US-hence why I was using this EHB as a temporary back-up. Directly deleting the back-up file from the drive is what caused this issue.......

I've done a lot of research on Mac forums and nothing has worked.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Yes but it is not working with external drives, usb, cd. How to create recycle bin for usb ... ?

So long after your comment, I´ve found it and follow your step-by-step guide. Many Thanks.

PS: I've also found in many of my external HHD a folder named "Trash", containing deleted files. Applied the same procedure and, it's gone.

I have a similar problem with an external hard drive. Will try this out tonight when I get home from work for sure! This helps alot!

Unfortunately when signed in as a normal user I am told these files are being used by another applications - despite no other applications running. I have even turned off the Windows file backup to see if that is the problem.

Logging in as the admin I am told I do not have permission to delete the files.

how can I can permissions to delete the files.

I need to delete them because every time I run my virus checker it gets snarled up on these folders, which I think are created by the windows file backup.

So I had a hard drive that was disconnected from the original host machine and had 170+GBs of junk in the recycle bin. Disk Cleanup worked like a charm! I don't know why I didn't think of that!