Emptying recycle bin spins up my external HD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bert Hyman
  • Start date Start date
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Bert Hyman

Windows XP SP3

I have an ESATA drive plugged that's only used for nightly backups. It
spins down when it's been idle for a while.

Whenever I empty the recycle bin, the external drive is spun up, which
always slows things down for several seconds. It's unnecessary and
annoying.

I tried configuring the recycle bin so that each drive has a separate
config, with the external drive set to "Do not move files to the Recycle
Bin," but that didn't change the behavior.

Any other tricks to try, or am I stuck with this?
 
Windows XP SP3

I have an ESATA drive plugged that's only used for nightly backups. It
spins down when it's been idle for a while.

Whenever I empty the recycle bin, the external drive is spun up, which
always slows things down for several seconds. It's unnecessary and
annoying.

I tried configuring the recycle bin so that each drive has a separate
config, with the external drive set to "Do not move files to the Recycle
Bin," but that didn't change the behavior.

Any other tricks to try, or am I stuck with this?
Click to expand...

Do you have system restore enabled on the external drive?
 
Such is the nature of the Recycle Bin, performing an operation on one disk
will cause Windows to reference all volumes on which Recycle Bin can be
used - irrespective of whether or not it *is* being used.

Same goes if you simply query the contents of the Recycle Bin on one drive
will also cause all of the drives to be accessed.

The only possibility is to turn off the Recycle Bin completely, for ALL of
the drives (global settings).

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
In "Tim Meddick"
The only possibility is to turn off the Recycle Bin completely, for
ALL of the drives (global settings).
Click to expand...

I'm careful, but not THAT careful.

Guess I'll just have to live with it.
 
If you make good backups, then the Recycle Bin becomes superflous....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
In "Tim Meddick"
If you make good backups, then the Recycle Bin becomes superflous....
Click to expand...

That only works if I'm willing to turn on "continuous backups" which
would probably be more intrusive than having the disk spin up once and a
while.
 
As Tim Meddick noted, unfortunately, we all are. That annoys me too to no
end, but that's life.

Do you have system restore enabled on the external drive?
Click to expand...

It is not relevant to this particular problem. However, system restore on an
external drive is an annoyance on its own.
Apparently, whenever one adds a new drive, system restore is turned on on it
by default. If one then manually disables it on that drive, it stays off for a
limited time (maybe until next reboot) and then pops back on.
I asked about it here a while ago, and was given a working solution - disable
system restore on all drives (losing all restore points), reboot the computer,
and then enable it only on the drives you want. That worked good, until I added
a new external drive, and now I'm back in the hated loop. And I really don't
want to lose the restore points right now. Has anybody got a solution that works
without having to disable all system restore first?
If not, I'll have to do the full treatment after my next backup, but I'd
really prefer another solution, if it exists.
 
In Patok
As Tim Meddick noted, unfortunately, we all are. That annoys me too
to no
end, but that's life.



It is not relevant to this particular problem. However, system restore
on an external drive is an annoyance on its own.
Apparently, whenever one adds a new drive, system restore is turned
on on it by default. If one then manually disables it on that drive,
it stays off for a limited time (maybe until next reboot) and then
pops back on.
I asked about it here a while ago, and was given a working solution
- disable system restore on all drives (losing all restore points),
reboot the computer, and then enable it only on the drives you want.
That worked good, until I added a new external drive, and now I'm back
in the hated loop. And I really don't want to lose the restore points
right now. Has anybody got a solution that works without having to
disable all system restore first?
Click to expand...

I just checked again, and system restore is still turned off on that
drive as well as a "spare" 1TB internal drive.

I turned it off on both quite some time ago and it's stayed off.

So far as I know, I've done nothing different to make it stay off, so I
can't offer any special insight into the problem.
 
Bert said:
I just checked again, and system restore is still turned off on that
drive as well as a "spare" 1TB internal drive.

I turned it off on both quite some time ago and it's stayed off.

So far as I know, I've done nothing different to make it stay off, so I
can't offer any special insight into the problem.
Click to expand...

Apparently, that depends on the luck of the draw. Some links suggest (like
this one):
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#11
that assigning a drive letter to the external drive will prevent system
restore from re-emerging, with the caveat "but not always". Maybe for you it
works, but for me it doesn't (I have individual and different drive letters
assigned to each external drive - doesn't help). Another link:
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37472.aspx
suggests to add an entry into the excluded folders key in the registry. I did
that, and will wait to see if it has any effect; the place where I found it
mentioned, though:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/mic...restore-off-my-external-drive.html#post893264
the poster says that it didn't work for him. Will see if it works for me.
 
If you make a compete backup once-a-week - what is it then you are
frightened of deleting? Since you have copies of 99.9% of your files....

I make a weekly backup and hardly ever use Recycle Bin from year's start to
year's end.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
If you make a compete backup once-a-week - what is it then you are
frightened of deleting? Since you have copies of 99.9% of your files....

I make a weekly backup and hardly ever use Recycle Bin from year's start
to year's end.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
Click to expand...

I use it to delete things I'm not sure I should delete.
 
I just checked again, and system restore is still turned off on that
drive as well as a "spare" 1TB internal drive.

I turned it off on both quite some time ago and it's stayed off.

So far as I know, I've done nothing different to make it stay off, so I
can't offer any special insight into the problem.
Click to expand...

The OP's "unnecessary" seems still unexamined. The process
"Empty Recycle Bin" polls all drives to find out whether /Recyler/
contains any filenames on each and any drive. In order to poll
a drive, the PC must set it in motion. This seems to be a
necessary step in the process.
 
In "Don Phillipson"
The OP's "unnecessary" seems still unexamined. The process
"Empty Recycle Bin" polls all drives to find out whether /Recyler/
contains any filenames on each and any drive. In order to poll
a drive, the PC must set it in motion. This seems to be a
necessary step in the process.
Click to expand...

A more reasonable approach would be to check the recycle bin config to
see if recycling is even enabled on the drive before bothering to do the
potentially expensive and possibly pointless I/O operation.

The only caveat here is that the recycle bin on a drive would have to be
emptied when recycling is disabled on it.

[I just noticed that on drives where recycling is disabled, the
"Recycler" directory can be deleted. I wonder if that might have a
beneficial effect.]
 
Patok said:
Apparently, that depends on the luck of the draw. Some links suggest
(like this one):
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#11
that assigning a drive letter to the external drive will prevent
system restore from re-emerging, with the caveat "but not always". Maybe
for you it works, but for me it doesn't (I have individual and different
drive letters assigned to each external drive - doesn't help). Another
link:
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37472.aspx
suggests to add an entry into the excluded folders key in the
registry. I did that, and will wait to see if it has any effect; the
place where I found it mentioned, though:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/mic...restore-off-my-external-drive.html#post893264

the poster says that it didn't work for him. Will see if it works for me.
Click to expand...

Shoot. It doesn't work for me either. It re-appeared, even as I had the
entire drive in the "exclude" list. Probably this list excludes *what* to
backup, but does not change *where*.
 
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