RECYCLER\S

I am clearing out one of my drives as I don't have enough space left to defrag it. I have used treesize to see just what folders are using what and I have found a folder named RECYCLER\S using 3,913.4mb of 3,920.8mb allocated and one named USMT2.UNC using 18,269.8mb. Can anyone tell me what RECYLER\S is. I see it in every drive I have when I'm running a malware programme, defragging etc. As I understand it USMT2.UNC refers to files collected by the 'transfer files' wizard, which I did use before I re-installed windows and saved it to this drive. Do I need these 2 folders for any reason. Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered. hedley

Generally speaking those are rubbish bins, it is where deleted files etc are kept, each drive has them, they are usually hidden files as they are a part of what the system uses, now as to getting rid of them I do not have a clear absolute answer, but, I can tell you on my system I have deleted such files without issue, but I can't guarantee there may be a freak issue in your set up that may cause issues, so do take care and back up any files you can't afford to lose to be really safe, but in my experience you shouldn't have a problem, but there is always the unknown. Now when trying to delete these files you may find a couple of things, first you wont be able to delete the main file (the actual bin), but you will be able to delete the files within it, or second it wont let you delete anything from within it saying it's in use or similar, worst case and you want to clear the drive of everything including what you can't remove, then you will need to save what you do not want to lose, I dragged mine over to the main drive (assuming it's the slave with the files to be cleaned), then format the drive and put the files back after, this will remove ALL the recycler etc files, including the ones you couldn't manually delete, it is the only way I know to get that space back, but it goes without saying, as soon as you start using it again the files will be reformed again, and eventually build in size till you get to where you are now again, so you may feel your better off investing in a larger drive to replace this one, but hope this helps a bit anyway.

Thanks for the reply. Could you tell me where/how to find the recycler\s folder. I tried the 'show hidden files & folders' in the folder options, but didn't see anything concerning this folder. The folder is on my slave drive. Thanks for the help. hedley

Well if you have already set the folder view options to show hidden files you should be able to see them, assuming it is your D drive it should be found at D Drive - RECYCLER, you will probably see another folder you can't access called System Volume Information, if you can't see these then I'm not sure, the logical way to find them is run TreeSize and look at the location it says these are at, and follow that to find them, if they are still not visible you either haven't selected to show hidden files or they are hidden as system files which are hidden behind another setting, so with this info see how far you get and we can go from there.

Thanks for the reply. The only thing I could find was in unticking 'hide extensions for known files'. I found RECYCLER & system volume information on drive C, but nothing about recycler on any other drive. RECYCLER on drive C contains 762KB/10 files. Treesize shows that the path of the folder is D:\RECYCLER, but I can't find it. Maybe my best bet would be to do as you suggested, to wipe my drive, then start over? Thanks for the help. hedley

I have had occasions such as that, and I simply saved the files to keep to the main drive then formated it, after which you can put the files back, to format it simplest way is go to your My Computer and right click on the drive and select format, there are other ways\options but this is the simplest, hope it helps.

*edit
Just to add to this, here is a thread about clearing up a system with not a lot of space, although I don't think it will help with the files in question here, it is good info that will help the general topic, Thanks to Doug for the link.
http://forums.whatthetech.com/How_clean_up…ce_t100889.html

Thanks for the reply. Just tried this one more time before formatting etc. I unticked hide extensions for known files again and I found the recycler folders and system volume information folders on all my drives. On looking at them they all seem to have the same files in them on every drive and the balloon says the folders contain files I have deleted. Couldn't access the system volume information folders. Came up 'access is denied'. Is it okay to just delete these files, even erase them using eraser? Forgot to add - some of the folders contain an NPPROTECT.LOG file which holds several BIN files. Can these be deleted/erased also? Thanks again for the help. hedley

Well as I said in my first reply, you should be fine to delete them IMHO (but there is always the unknown that could come into play), at least the ones it will allow you too, many may not, and if that is the case then formatting is the only solution AFAIK, the folder thats protected is the same on my system, so it's not something to worry about as such, it's just the system protecting itself generally speaking, but there is 1 important note about that though, these hidden and sometimes protected files\folders are often where infections hide out, so if you have any suspicion that you may have an infection then it would be best to ask the pro's for some advice before going further, if it were me I would transfer the files to keep and format it, then put the files back, because every once in a while it doesn't hurt, and if at a stage where it would benefit the system (all drives get bogged down over time) it is often a performance boost as well, so ask yourself how long since the drive was formatted and how much use it's had, if it's seen a lot of action over a long period formatting certainly wont hurt, if it has only just started being used then just deleting the files it will allow may be the better way forward for you, but the only way to clear the files you can't access, or are denied in deleting a format is the only way to remove those, hope this helps anyway.