Windows 7 What are all these "recycling" files on my disks?

[dkperez]

Can someone tell me whether all these are in use, and/or what they're all doing?
On my system disk, using Windows 7 Professional, I have:

$Recycle.Bin
Recovery
RECYCLER
System Volume Information

All my other partitions have all the above EXCEPT "Recovery", so I presume that one must be used for "recovering" from something, but if it's for disk crashes or something disastrous it wouldn't be on this partition, would it?

And System Volume Information I presume has "system volume information" so it's no big deal, but why two "recycle" folders?

 

[cybercore]

All my other partitions have all the above EXCEPT "Recovery", so I presume that one must be used for "recovering" from something, but if it's for disk crashes or something disastrous it wouldn't be on this partition, would it?

If "Recovery" folder has important recovery records, then you should keep this folder safe and should not attempt to format the partition with "Recovery" folder on it. You can make a copy of it to a safer place, such as external hard drive.

And System Volume Information I presume has "system volume information" so it's no big deal, but why two "recycle" folders?

Why 2 recycle folders ? Some software or a software installer could have created these folders as a workspace.

 

[JessicaD]

Can someone tell me whether all these are in use, and/or what they're all doing?
On my system disk, using Windows 7 Professional, I have:

$Recycle.Bin
Recovery
RECYCLER
System Volume Information

All my other partitions have all the above EXCEPT "Recovery", so I presume that one must be used for "recovering" from something, but if it's for disk crashes or something disastrous it wouldn't be on this partition, would it?

And System Volume Information I presume has "system volume information" so it's no big deal, but why two "recycle" folders?

These are all System Files and Folders -- these files are hidden by default. It appears you have enabled the ability view hidden files and folders. You can disable this if you'd like.

 

[fjgold]

These are all System Files and Folders -- these files are hidden by default. It appears you have enabled the ability view hidden files and folders. You can disable this if you'd like.

System Volume info is used by System Restore. If you several NTFS partitions they will
have the locked and hidden System Volume Info folders.

$Recycle.bin is as the name implies the recycle bin for each partition.
You can control the size of each partition's recycle bin or disable them entirely.

You do this by right clicking your desktop recycle bin icon and select properties.
Here you will see each partition and it's recycle bin status and size.

Any external drive will show here as well.

My recovery folder two cryptic files a 3 MB boot.sdi file and a 138 MB winre.wim file.

Recycler appears related to the recycle bin.

I think in my case it is related to linux distributions that I run on some of my partitions.

It is created by the Linux distributions because the Windows partitions are mounted when in Linux. Basically a linux version of recycle.bin.

 

[dkperez]

Yeah, I always enable seeing everything 'cause I hate all this "hidden" folder silliness...

Thanks for the tip on the settings for the recycling size... It appears on my partitions the default is about 5% of the partition size... On a 1TB drive (which actually says 930 GB), the recycle bin size is just under 50GB...

Oddly, in my $Recycle.Bin I have three "Recycle Bin" files..... Doesn't appear to be a problem, just a trifle odd.

My recovery folder also has those two files in it......

So, it appears the only oddball is "Recycler"..... Which has a single folder with a VERY long, cryptic name. Since the box is only a single boot, Windows 7 system, with no Linux or anything else, I'm not sure what the Recycler is, but it doesn't appear to use a lot of space, so as long as it's not something problematic, I'm not too concerned.

 

[fjgold]

Yeah, I always enable seeing everything 'cause I hate all this "hidden" folder silliness...

Thanks for the tip on the settings for the recycling size... It appears on my partitions the default is about 5% of the partition size... On a 1TB drive (which actually says 930 GB), the recycle bin size is just under 50GB...

Oddly, in my $Recycle.Bin I have three "Recycle Bin" files..... Doesn't appear to be a problem, just a trifle odd.

My recovery folder also has those two files in it......

So, it appears the only oddball is "Recycler"..... Which has a single folder with a VERY long, cryptic name. Since the box is only a single boot, Windows 7 system, with no Linux or anything else, I'm not sure what the Recycler is, but it doesn't appear to use a lot of space, so as long as it's not something problematic, I'm not too concerned.

I normally enable showing hidden files also, but in Win 7 doing so shows the hidden files on the desktop.

I like my desktop to show only a handful of shortcuts.

I set my folder options to hide these files and folders. If I need to access them I unhide them temporarily.

As to the recycler I think Cyber may be right, some program may have created it.

 

[RAK]

Recovery. contains the Winre.wim image file. This is the Windows image that isloaded whenever you repair your computer from the F8 startup menu.

$Recycle.bin is the folder which holds your recycle bins, for your current OS or, if so, multiple installations. The $sign indicates that it is temporary - in this case, available for use.
System Volume Information contains Your system restore points.It can be moved to another partition.