$RECYCLE.BIN Takes Up Loads Of Space! Help!

Hello all:
I was going through cleaning out my external hard drives and discovered a hidden file called $RECYCLE.BIN that was taking up a few gigs that I really need back. I asked my tech-savvy boyfriend about it and he said that something was corrupted and that I essentially needed to reformat the hard drive. The attached pic shows the structure of the file. Buried deep I am finding files that I've deleted not long ago (or at least thought I deleted). I've run into this before and deleted the contents of the file, but it nearly rendered my hard drive unusable. So is there any way to fix this? Before, I just deleted the contents of $RECYCLE.BIN, but I'm thinking if I just delete the actual files that I thought I had deleted (for example, a VIDEO_TS file) that I may just get away with it. Any thoughts, suggestions or help is very much appreciated!

See attached file!

Hello siouxdax. You can set the size of the Recyclebin on that drive, and a few other attributes:

Recycle Bin storage size - Vista Forums

1) On the desktop, right-click Recycle Bin, and then click Properties.

2) Under Recycle Bin Location, click the location of the Recycle Bin you want to change (the drive with the issue).

3) Click Custom size, and then, in the Maximum size (MB) box, enter a maximum storage size (in megabytes) for the Recycle Bin.

4) Click OK.

This will limit the size of the recycle bin and you can recover that extra space. A Guy

A Guy:
Please note that this is in regards to an external hard drive.

Yes I know, does the drive not show up on the list of recycle bins in my instructions above? A Guy

A Guy:
My apologies, I misunderstood you there for a moment. I followed your instructions, but have yet to see any changes on the drive. the files in question are still there.

I'd suggest dragging those current files to a new folder on your C drive, just in case. Then remove them from your D drive. It's likely the new size for the recycle bin won't take effect until those files are removed. Removing files from that recycle bin shouldn't cause any drive instability, I only caution to make backups because of your statement in your 1st post.

A Guy