Recycle Bin Overview

The Microsoft Windows XP Recycle Bin provides you with added safety when deleting files or folders. After an item is deleted, Windows XP places it in the Recycle Bin instead of permanently destroying it.

Note: Items deleted from a floppy disk or a network drive are permanently destroyed and are not sent to the Recycle Bin

Items sent to the Recycle Bin remain there until you decide to restore them to their original location or permanently delete them from your computer. Until they are permanently deleted, these items continue to take up space on your hard disk.

If the Recycle Bin fills up, Windows XP automatically cleans out old items to accommodate recently added items. These old items are permanently destroyed. In addition, any file or folder that is bigger than the Recycle Bin’s allocated space will be permanently destroyed upon deletion.

If you're hard disk is running low on memory, you can manually empty the Recycle Bin. You can also restrict the amount of hard disk space that the Recycle Bin uses.

Windows allocates one Recycle Bin for each hard disk or partition. If your hard disk is partitioned, or if you have more than one hard disk in your computer, you can specify different settings for each Recycle Bin.

To change the storage capacity for all Recycle Bins:

1.	On the desktop, right-click the Recycle Bin icon, and click Properties on the shortcut menu.

2.	Select Use one setting for all drives.

3.	Drag the slider to increase or decrease the Recycle Bin storage capacity.

4.	Click OK.

To change the storage capacity for an individual Recycle Bin:

1.	On the desktop, right-click the Recycle Bin icon, and click Properties on the shortcut menu.

2.	Select Configure drives independently, and click the appropriate drive tab.

3.	Drag the slider to increase or decrease the Recycle Bin storage capacity.

4.	Click OK.