The Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin is your desktop trash basket. This is where files and folders become when they've outlived their usefulness. It'southward a waiting room for data oblivion; your files stay hither until yous empty the Recycle Bin—or until you lot rescue them by dragging them out again.

While you tin can certainly drag files or folders onto the Recycle Bin icon, it's usually faster to highlight them and and then perform one of the following options:

  • Printing the Delete primal.

  • Cull File→Delete.

  • Correct-click a highlighted icon and choose Delete from the shortcut menu.

Windows XP asks if you're sure y'all desire to send the item to the Recycle Bin. (You don't lose much past clicking Yeah, since information technology's easy enough to change your mind, as noted on Section iv.4.1.) Now the Recycle Bin icon looks like it's chock over with newspaper.

Tip

To plow off the "Are y'all sure?" message that appears when you send something Bin-ward, right-click the Recycle Bin. Then choose Properties from the shortcut menu, and plow off "Brandish delete confirmation dialog." Turning off the alarm isn't much of a safety run a risk; afterwards all, files aren't really beingness removed from your drive when y'all put them in the Recycle Bin.

You can put unwanted files and folders into the Recycle Bin from whatever folder window, from inside Windows Explorer, or even within the Open File dialog box of many Windows applications (see Chapter 6).

Notation

All of these methods put icons from your difficult drive into the Recycle Bin. Merely deleting an icon from a removable drive (floppy or Nil drives, for instance), or other computers on the network, does not involve the Recycle Bin, giving you no opportunity to retrieve them. (Deleting annihilation with the DOS del or erase commands bypasses the Recycle Bin, likewise.)

Restoring Deleted Files and Folders

If y'all modify your listen about sending something to the software graveyard, simply open the Recycle Bin by double-clicking it. A window similar the 1 in Figure 4-8 opens.

When you double-click the Recycle Bin (top), its window (bottom) displays information about each folder and file that it holds. To sort its contents, making it easier to find a deleted icon, click the gray column heading for the type of sort you need.

Figure four-8. When you double-click the Recycle Bin (top), its window (bottom) displays information about each folder and file that it holds. To sort its contents, making it easier to find a deleted icon, click the gray column heading for the type of sort you need.

To restore a selected file or a folder—or a bunch of them—click the "Restore the selected items" link in the task pane, or choose File→Restore, or correct-click any one of the selected icons then choose Restore from the shortcut card.

Restored means returned to the folder from whence it came—wherever it was on your hard drive when deleted. If you restore an icon whose original folder has been deleted in the meantime, Windows XP even re-creates that binder to hold the restored file(s).

Tip

Y'all don't accept to put icons back into their original folders. By dragging them out of the Recycle Bin window, you can put them into any folder you like.

Emptying the Recycle Bin

While there's an advantage to the Recycle Bin (you lot get to undo your mistakes), at that place's too a downside: The files in the Recycle Bin occupy as much disk space equally they did when they were stored in folders. Deleting files doesn't gain you additional disk space until yous empty the Recycle Bin.

That'southward why virtually people, sooner or later, follow up an icon's journey to the Recycle Bin with ane of these cleanup operations:

  • Right-click the Recycle Bin icon, or a blank spot in the Recycle Bin window, and choose Empty Recycle Bin from the shortcut menu.

  • Click the "Empty the Recycle Bin" link on the task pane in the Recycle Bin window.

  • In the Recycle Bin window, highlight but the icons y'all desire to eliminate, so press the Delete cardinal. (Use this method when y'all want to nuke merely some of the Recycle Bin's contents.)

  • Await. When the Recycle Bin accumulates so much stuff that it occupies a significant per centum of your hard bulldoze infinite, Windows empties it automatically, as described in the adjacent section.

The commencement iii of these procedures produce an "Are you sure?" bulletin.

Customizing the Recycle Bin

You tin make two useful changes to the behavior of the Recycle Bin. To investigate these alterations, right-click the Recycle Bin icon and choose Properties from the shortcut bill of fare. The Recycle Bin Backdrop dialog box appears (see Figure 4-9).

Use the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box to govern the way the Recycle Bin works, or even if it works at all. If you have multiple hard drives, the dialog box offers a tab for each of them so you can configure a separate and independent Recycle Bin on each drive.

Figure 4-nine. Employ the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box to govern the way the Recycle Bin works, or even if information technology works at all. If you lot take multiple hard drives, the dialog box offers a tab for each of them so you can configure a split up and contained Recycle Bin on each drive.

Skip the Recycle Bin

If you, a person of steely nerve and perfect judgment, never delete a file in mistake, and then your files can bypass the Recycle Bin entirely when you delete them. Furthermore, you'll reclaim disk infinite instantly when you press the Delete key to vaporize a highlighted file or folder.

To set this up, turn on the "Practise not move files to the Recycle Bin" checkbox (shown in Figure 4-9). And voilà: Your condom net is gone. (Particularly if you also turn off the confirmation dialog box shown in Figure 4-9—and so y'all're really living dangerously.)

If that proposition seems too extreme, consider this safety/convenience compromise: Exit the Recycle Bin safety net in identify most of the time, but bypass the Recycle Bin on command only when information technology seems appropriate.

The trick to skipping the Recycle Bin on a one-shot basis is to press the Shift central while you delete a file. Doing and so—and and so clicking Yes in the confirmation box—deletes the file permanently, skipping its layover in the Recycle Bin. (The Shift-primal play a joke on works for every method of deleting a file: pressing the Delete key, choosing Delete from the shortcut menu, and and then on.)

Auto-emptying the Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin has 2 advantages over the concrete trash cans behind your house: Showtime, it never smells; 2nd, when it'southward total, it can empty itself automatically.

To configure this cocky-emptying feature, yous specify a certain fullness limit as a percent of the difficult bulldoze capacity. When the Recycle Bin contents reach that level, Windows begins deleting files (permanently) as new files arrive in the Recycle Bin. Files that arrived in the Recycle Bin kickoff are deleted get-go.

Unless you tell it otherwise, Windows XP reserves 10 percent of your drive to hold Recycle Bin contents. To change that percentage, just move the slider on the Properties dialog box (Figure 4-9). Keeping the percentage low means you're less likely to run out of the disk space y'all demand to install software and create documents. On the other hand, raising the percentage means you'll accept more opportunity to restore files y'all afterward want to retrieve.

Note

Every disk has its own Recycle Bin, which holds files and folders you accept deleted from that disk. As you tin can meet in the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box, the factory setting for automatic trash-deletion is 10 percentage for all of your drives. If you click "Configure drives independently," you tin can utilize the separate dialog-box tabs for each of your difficult drives. Appropriately, each hard drive will then have its ain trash-limit slider and "Brandish delete confirmation dialog" checkbox.

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