Recycle Bin on an External Drive on Windows: Easily Accessed

There is also a recycling bin for external hard drives? How to recover files in the external hard disk recycling bin? This article will guide you to access the Recycle Bin of an external hard drive and how to recover data from it.

Just like the Recycle Bin we found on the Windows desktop, external hard drives actually have their own Recycle Bin as well. Files deleted from external hard drive will be sent here, and you can recover them if you do not intend to delete them.

How to access the recycling bin on an external hard drive

Similar to other system files, the Recycle Bin on an external hard drive is hidden by default. You can modify the settings to make them visible.

The $RECYCLE.BIN folder on the external drive is used to collect deleted files, and its function is similar to the Recycle Bin. Here are the simple steps to find the Recycle Bin:

Step 1: You should first connect the external hard drive to your computer and then double-click the folder icon to open File Explorer.

Step 2: Select the target drive. If your external drive is divided into multiple partitions, you can choose any of them. Switch to the View tab on the top toolbar and click Options .

Step 3: Select the View tab. You should enable Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives and disable Hide Protected Operating System Files (recommended) .

Step 4: Click Apply and OK to apply this change and close the window.

Now you can open the disk and find that the $RECYCLE.BIN folder becomes visible.

Can I delete the $RECYCLE.BIN folder?

You can definitely delete the $RECYCLE.BIN folder. This folder is for your external hard drive just like the Recycle Bin for your computer. It takes up too much space due to many deleted files. You can clear the files to free up space on the external drive. For Windows users, it will be recreated the next time the file is deleted.

To clear the Recycle Bin, try the following steps:

Step 1. Follow the steps above to display the recycling bin.

Step 2. Double-click to open the $RECYCLE.BIN folder and open the Recycle Bin.

Step 3. Select Clear Recycle Bin on the top toolbar.

Step 4. The system will ask you whether you want to permanently delete these files. Select Yes to confirm.

How to recover data from an external hard drive

Recover files from the Recycle Bin of an external drive

It's easy to recover files using the Recycle Bin on the external drive. You just need to open the Recycle Bin, find the files you want, and click the Recover option to recover the deleted files.

However, you may not find the file you want, or have mistakenly deleted the $RECYCLE.BIN folder, which will permanently erase your files from the external hard drive. So how to recover files in this case? You can continue with the next method.

Recover files using MiniTool Power Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a software designed by MiniTool Solutions to protect and recover your files. With it, you can easily recover lost files in various situations such as error deletion, device corruption, partition loss, and more. This free file recovery software not only works well in external hard drive recovery, but also helps with CF card recovery, USB drive recovery, etc.

If you are looking for professional file recovery software, why not try MiniTool Power Data Recovery free version?

Summarize

Each drive has its own recycle bin, but is always hidden. You can change the settings to make them visible and use it to recover important files. This article shows you a simple guide to accessing the external hard drive recycling bin. Hope you get useful information here.

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