Those are older links, perhaps things have changed, I don't know. I didn't think USB had recycle bins, but I did think removable HDDs did. I could always be wrong. I don't feel like searching myself, but I do notice in disk cleanup all of my drives have their own recycle bin (none are removable), if that is any indication that drives have recycle bins or not.
also, I notice I cannot do the same for my USB (disk cleanup)
It depends how an external storage device represents itself to Windows which determines whether a recycle bin folder is placed on the device.
What I'm saying is I don't think that it is possible. Perhaps there is a windows recycle bin expert that comes around and proves me wrong, but until then, gunna have to live with the way windows set things up, bro. logic got it right, it does depend on how hardware represents itself to windows in determining wether or not you get recycle binned or not
Thanks for all the responses guys. I've thrown in the towel on this one. It never happened when using with the XP machine so I'm putting it down to another quirk of the Windows 7 Operating System
It's really simple - $RECYCLE.BIN will appear on fixed drives. It's never created on removable drives (meaning, those that Windows considers to be removable).
What puzzles me is why your external drive, which should be seen as a removable drive (and is, after all), isn't treated as such by Windows.
It beats me too. It happens on every removable drive I've used and never happened with the same drives on XP.
My experience matches oprez's. I just tried two external drives I have handy, one an eSATA and the other a USB. Both behave exactly the same:
1. If it has a $RECYCLE.BIN directory (only visible w/"Hide protected system files" unchecked), delete it
2. Disconnect and re-connect, no $RECYCLE.BIN
3. Delete something, anything, then $RECYCLE.BIN appears again
4. Try setting drive to "Don't move files to Recycle Bin. Remove immediately" in Recycle Bin properties and that doesn't help; a $RECYCLE.BIN is still created.
I'm not sure what to make of your counter-experience Corazon--this seems to work the same for all my W7 PCs (Home Premium).
I wonder too what the RECYCLER dir is about--maybe one has to delete an entry in there as well???
maxseven...I've done all those things too and still it comes back. I also tried hooking it up in XP Mode on th 7 laptop to see if that would make any difference and the answer is...no it didn't.
Your issue fascinated me enough to Google some more on it, and I came-up with another thread right here that says "no solution":
Disable creation of $recycle.bin folder?
What is confusing of course is that Corazon doesn't have the $RECYCLE.BIN. I wonder what is different about his setup vs the-rest-of-the-world's.
P.S. I looked in the registry to see what I might find, and there were only some references to Windows Index fwiw.
P.P.S. My comment about RECYCLER is irrelevant--that one gets created when the drive is plugged into an XP machine (which I do too).
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