Recycle Bin does not display files deleted from NTFS drives

Here is my situation:


My system is a Dell XPS 8300 running Windows 7 Home Premium.

I need help in getting the recycle bin to show deleted files. Of course, deleted files that are not visible cannot be restored.


But the deleted files ARE in the recycle bin.

How do I know?


1. Clicking on "Empty the recycle bin" identifies the right number of deleted files in the Recycle bin the including invisible ones, though clicking the "Restore All items" button restores only visible files.


2. The CCleaner utility (from Piriform.com) sees them. When I press the ‘Analyze’ button with the ‘Empty recycle bin’ set, I can see all the erased files, but cannot restore them from there, since CCleaner is designed to remove junk files, not to restore them

More details:
1. When I delete a file from external drive J:, it IS visible in the recycle bin. J: is a FAT drive. (Previously it was connected to an XP system )
2. Files deleted from Local drive C: and external drive L: are NOT visible in the recycle bin. C: and L: are formatted as NTFS
3. Disconnect the L: external drive and the files deleted from C: reappear in the recycle bin. Reconnect the L: drive and they disappear again.

In short:

• L: deleted files NEVER show in the recycle bin,
• J: deleted files ALWAYS appear in the recycle bin,
• C: deleted files appear in the recycle bin if L: is disconnected, and disappear if L: is connected.

4. Both J: and L: are external drives connected to USB ports of the system. However, both are identified as Local Drives rather than as Removable Drives.



What I tried:
1. From the command line (as administrator) I ran “rd /s /q/ [drive name:]\$recycle.bin” for drives C: and L: (and J: too) and still no fix. The idea was that the recycle bin folders were corrupted and would be regenerated uncorrupted.
2. I ran Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebyte -Anti Malware in addition to McAfee which came with my system. None of these is detecting any malware on my system.


Any help would be appreciated.


gc

Thanks, A Guy.

Attached is a shot of "Disk Management" screen.

As mentioned in the earlier message, the L: deleted files are not in the hidden $RECYCLE.BIN folder.

More details:

in the L: $RECYCLE.BIN folder is another folder called "Recycle Bin". The icon beside it is a padlock with a page. Opening THAT subfolder, one can see the file deleted from J:

in the C: $RECYCLE.BIN folder, there are two items.

• The first is folder called "Recycle Bin" (just like in L:) and it contains the same file deleted from J:
• The second is another folder "S-1-5-20". I cannot open it (even though having Admin rights) . The dialog says "Location is not available" and "Access is denied".

Hoping for a solution.


gc aka GeorgeC

?????

I want the recycle bin to behave in the way it is supposed to.

When I delete something, it should go to the recycle bin and allow the OPTION to be restored!

Right click on the recycling bin and select properties. In the window that comes up check each drive for the option to "Don't move files to the recycle bin. remove files immediately when deleted"

Tick "Custom size" for each drive and expand it to something realistic like 4500MB.

A Guy said:

What is in the contents of drive L:? Did it have an operating system on it? Older OS use a different designation for the recycle bin. Am I correct to assume that everything worked correctly before with L: connected with it's current content?

A Guy

What is in the contents of drive L:? Miscellaneous Files and folders
Did it have an operating system on it? Older OS use a different designation for the recycle bin.
No operating system

Am I correct to assume that everything worked correctly before with L: connected with it's current content?

Good assumption, and 99% likely correct. I'm hesitating on the last 1% only because I may not have been paying attention earlier.

Also, as I described before, disconnect the L: drive (LaCie 2TB Minimus) and everything is OK.

Now some additional info: My daughter has an identical LaCie 2TB Minimus. It has two partitions: Fat32 and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The FAT32 is visible from my WIN7 machine, the Mac partition, not. More importantly, connecting it to my Win7 machine I see content of my recycle bin fine, i.e no problem.

With my identical drive, the content of the recycle bin disappears. What's the difference between the two drives? I created a 1.81TB NTFS partition on my drive leaving 532MB as a FAT32 (of which 0MB is empty).

Clearly the problem is somehow related to the NTFS partition that I created, but Why? And how to fix the problem (without having to change the NTFS partition to FAT32)?

edwar said:

Right click on the recycling bin and select properties. In the window that comes up check each drive for the option to "Don't move files to the recycle bin. remove files immediately when deleted"

Tick "Custom size" for each drive and expand it to something realistic like 4500MB.

The Maximum size for drive L: is set to 97407MB.