New external hard drive, odd folders...

[George]

I just got a Western Digital Passport, 80GB, to backup my data, seems to
work pretty good, just plug it into USB, and drive appears in Win Explorer
menu.

There are three folders that I don't recognize, I wondered what they are,
and if I can just delete them.

E:

autorun

---wdlogo.ico (an icon file...why would they put this here? And, to my
knowledge, there's nothing to autorun either)

Recycled

---(seems to have the deleted things in here...is this just a mirror of
the full PC's recyle bin? why here?)

{98989 A40B00 4C8484 9G939}

---I made above up, but folder looks something like this. It appears
when I plug it into USB of PC#1, but not in PC#2 on other side of room. A
mystery.

 

[Jerry]

Autorun - is the same as the autorun feature when you insert a CD or DVD in
the player. In this case you're inserting a hard drive so it has to be
'started', hence autorun.

Recycled - is the recycle bin for that drive; just like all your other hard
drives.

Have no idea.

 

[Guest]

is it possible to have enabled System Restore points for this HDD?
My Computer, rt click, Properties>System Restore

 

[Nepatsfan]

I just got a Western Digital Passport, 80GB, to backup my
data, seems to work pretty good, just plug it into USB, and
drive appears in Win Explorer menu.

There are three folders that I don't recognize, I wondered
what they are, and if I can just delete them.

E:

---wdlogo.ico (an icon file...why would they put this
here? And, to my knowledge, there's nothing to autorun
either)

---(seems to have the deleted things in here...is this
just a mirror of the full PC's recyle bin? why here?)

---I made above up, but folder looks something like this.
It appears when I plug it into USB of PC#1, but not in PC#2
on other side of room. A mystery.

1. You're right that there's "nothing to autorun" but the
principle remains the same. The presence of an Autorun
folder on your external hard drive means the manufacturer
wanted to provide a specialized icon that shows up in My
Computer or Windows Explorer. There should also be an
autorun.inf file at the root of that drive.

The contents of autorun.inf will be the following:

[autorun]
ICON=AUTORUN\WDLOGO.ICO

If you open My Computer, is the icon for your USB drive a blue
box with a white WD inside? If you deleted the Autoruns folder,
the wdlogo.ico file, or autorun.inf, the icon displayed will be
the Windows generic hard drive icon. I'm guessing you already
deleted the autorun.inf file.

2. Every hard drive or partition contains it's own
Recycled/Recycler folder. Even if you somehow manage to delete
this folder, Windows will recreate it when you reboot. You can
limit the size of this folder by right clicking the Recycle Bin
icon on your Desktop and selecting Properties from the menu.
Click on the tab for your USB drive and move the slider to
limit the size.

Since you didn't provide details concerning the third item, I
won't even venture a guess.

Nepatsfan