Maximum Recycle Bin size

  • Thread starter Thread starter cosmin
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cosmin

Is it me or Windows doesn't allow me any Recycle Bin to be bigger than 4
GB, no matter what percentage you set it to be? I got burned severely just
today, when 29 Gb of files got deleted and there was no way to get them
back.
 
cosmin said:
Is it me or Windows doesn't allow me any Recycle Bin to be bigger than 4
GB, no matter what percentage you set it to be? I got burned severely just
today, when 29 Gb of files got deleted and there was no way to get them
back.
Click to expand...

Is it on a FAT32 partition or NTFS?
 
Even if you set a %, XP restricts the maximum size. You would have to
modify a Registry Key value in the Policies/Explorer section of HKLM.
 
So this is by design? It's not just the percentage. Even if you set it
individually for each partition, it doesn't go past 3.99 GB. So, what policy
is that?
 
I believe that the Bin works in a "FIFO", First-in, First-out fashion.
So if you drop new content into it and it's nearly full, it will purge
out the oldest data stored to make room for the new deletions. The
key name is "RecycleBinSize", but I'm not sure even that would
allow you to increase the maximum size. This may be one of those
"Hard Coded" values in XP (~3.99 Gigabytes).
 
cosmin said:
Is it me or Windows doesn't allow me any Recycle Bin to be bigger
than 4 GB, no matter what percentage you set it to be? I got burned
severely just today, when 29 Gb of files got deleted and there was no
way to get them back.
Click to expand...


"No way" to get them back may be an exaggeration.

"Deleting" a file doesn't actually delete it; it just marks the space as
available to be used. There are third-party programs that can sometimes
recover deleted files. The problem is that the space used by the file is
likely to become overwritten very quickly, and this makes the file
unrecoverable.

So your chances of successfully recovering this file are decent if you try
recovering it immediately after deleting it, and rapidly go downhill from
there. If you've been using the computer since then (for example to write
this question and read this answer), your chances are probably very poor by
now.

But if the file is important enough, it's worth a try anyway. Stop using the
computer in question immediately, if you haven't done so already. Download
an undelete program (here's one:
http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html but there are several others
to choose from; do a Google search) on a friend's computer and bring it to
yours on a floppy to try.

If this fails, your only other recourse is to take the drive to a
professional file recovery company. This kind of service is very expensive
and may or may not work in your case.
 
Yes, I know that's how it works. But it could at least be mentioned when you
set it up? Something like, yeah, we're kinda behind the times, hard drives
are getting bigger and we still can't keep more than 4 GBs in the Recycle
Bin.
 
I can see your position, but Windows is designed for the "Typical or
Average" user. I think XP is now five years old, so at the time it (XP)
was on the drawing board a Bin of ~4 Gigabytes was fairly large.
You're probably just utilizing it in a way that wasn't considered at the
development stage. A lot of users I help don't even know to "Take
out the Trash" and have items that date back years or more. Then you
add Norton's Protected (RootKit) bin and there are trashed items that
might never get off the disk drive.
 
I can't agree with you. What good is it that NTFS supports files bigger than
4 GBs, (which has been true for quite some time) if the Recycle Bin doesn't?
And you're gonna tell me drives big enough to warrant the need for this
weren't around back then? They may not have been 120 GB or bigger, but even
on a 20 GB drive, you can set the Recycle Bin to 30% percent (which is more
than 4 GB), and XP will happily let you, without telling you that once you
delete more than 4 GB, you can kiss your data goodbye and you won't even
know about it).
 
cosmin said:
Is it me or Windows doesn't allow me any Recycle Bin to be bigger than 4
GB, no matter what percentage you set it to be? I got burned severely just
today, when 29 Gb of files got deleted and there was no way to get them
back.
Click to expand...

YOU ****ed up BIG time... and you blame MS???

You're a moron
 
Uncle Grumpy said:
YOU ****ed up BIG time... and you blame MS???

You're a moron
Click to expand...
You know what, when I have a partition that's 48 GB and I set the Recycle
Bin to 50%, that's 24 GB. That's the size it should be, not 3.99 GB, not
without telling me anyway. What the hell is your problem anyway?
 
D. Spencer Hines said:
You deleted 29 GB of WHAT and did not back it up?

DSH
Click to expand...

Zip files. Looks like I'll get some of those back though using Restoration.
It's better than nothing.
 
If you wanted to save them why did you delete them without backing them up?

I also get a warning message that says this file is too big for Recycle Bin,
do you really want to delete it, or words to that effect.

Perhaps my Windows XP Pro is simply smarter and better house-broken than
yours. <g>

DSH
 
cosmin said:
Is it me or Windows doesn't allow me any Recycle Bin to be bigger than 4
GB, no matter what percentage you set it to be? I got burned severely just
today, when 29 Gb of files got deleted and there was no way to get them
back.
Click to expand...

What your setting in the Recycle Bin in the maximum "possible" size of the
container. If you click on the local drive tab of the Recycle Bin
properties, you can see the actual size of the container, which is probably
3.99 GB.

I think you'll find that when you try and delete a file that exceeds the
size of the Recycle Bin, you'll be presented with a "Delete" confirmation
dialog. When you click "Yes", the file is deleted, not placed in the
Recycle Bin.

carl
 
Bingo!

Vagabond Software said:
What your setting in the Recycle Bin in the maximum "possible" size of the
container. If you click on the local drive tab of the Recycle Bin
properties, you can see the actual size of the container, which is
probably 3.99 GB.

I think you'll find that when you try and delete a file that exceeds the
size of the Recycle Bin, you'll be presented with a "Delete" confirmation
dialog. When you click "Yes", the file is deleted, not placed in the
Recycle Bin.

carl
Click to expand...
 
I didn't delete them. There were lots of small (10-50 MB) files. I used a
program that checks for files older than.... and it has an option to move
files that meet the criteria to the Recycle Bin. So it started moving them,
but as it moved them, the Recycle Bin filled up so Windows progressively
cleared the files from the Recycle Bin as the new ones got moved.
But this wouldn't have happened if the Recycle Bin worked as advertised. I
mean, one of the first things I do when I install Windows is to set the
Recycle Bin to 50% using the "Global->Use one Setting for all drives". where
it says that the maximum size of the Bin for each drive is 50% for each
drive." That's why I'm pissed off. The partition in question being 48 GB and
the Recycle Bin being set to 50% for all partitions, you'd think it would be
24 GB, not 4.
 
Vagabond Software said:
What your setting in the Recycle Bin in the maximum "possible" size of the
container. If you click on the local drive tab of the Recycle Bin
properties, you can see the actual size of the container, which is
probably 3.99 GB.

I think you'll find that when you try and delete a file that exceeds the
size of the Recycle Bin, you'll be presented with a "Delete" confirmation
dialog. When you click "Yes", the file is deleted, not placed in the
Recycle Bin.
Click to expand...

That's true for when a single file will not fit in the bin (regardless of
any
files already in the bin). But FIFO doesn't tell you when the recycle bin
has to remove the oldest files to make way for a new file. That's the
OP's main gripe, besides the 3.99GB limitation.
 
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