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Question About "Hidden" Recycle Bin on Flash Drive


Monroe

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Ok, I just discovered something today on one of my flash drives and I have some questions. Several years ago I bought two 4 GB Kingston DataTraveler flash drives or memory sticks. I only had Windows 98SE installed on my computers at the time. One of the flash drives has had this "hidden" Recycle Bin folder on it for some time but I am not sure when it first showed up on that drive ... the other drive, which is identical, does not have a "hidden" Recycle Bin on it. The flash drive with the "hidden" Recycle Bin is used almost daily but the other is not used very often ... mostly have it as a spare flash drive.

What I discovered today is that the drive with the "hidden" Recycle Bin was nearly full but looking at the items that I have on the flash drive ... I figured that all those items in no way totaled 4 GB so I checked the "hidden" Recycle Bin, which was empty, nothing visible inside it but when I right clicked on it to check Properties, it was showing over 1 GB of something in there. My Recycle Bin on my Desktop was empty. I searched around on Google and found others also having this same problem but with newer OSs like XP and maybe Vista. Some suggestions were to just reformat the flash drive but I had some things that I wanted to keep on the flash drive. Was only going to reformat as a last resort. I did learn about a program called iBin v2.9 (iBin is a portable recycle bin for USB flash drives.) I installed that program and was able to finally get rid of the "hidden" Recycle Bin and then I decided to move the items I wanted completely off the flash drive and do a reformat of the drive anyway.

I put those items back on the flash drive and have no "hidden" Recycle Bin showing. Just curious if anyone can explain how I probably got this "hidden" Recycle Bin on this flash drive in the first place ... since it isn't on the other identical 4 GB flash drive. I checked all my other flash drives, all were OK except for one Memorex 512 MB flash drive which also had the "hidden" Recycle Bin ... this 512 MB flash drive is used every day. These two flash drives (with the "hidden" Recycle Bin folder) are mostly connected to my Win 98SE computers but I have connected them both to XP machines occasionally. Could being connected to an XP machine have put this "hidden" Recycle Bin on my flash drives? I'm sure some of my other flash drives have been connected to an XP machine occasionally and they have no "hidden" Recycle Bin folders on them.

I don't want any Recycle Bin folders on my flash drives so I'd like to know how all this happened in the first place ... also, why (where) was there over a GB of "something" in the Recycle Bin of the 4 GB flash drive but there was nothing showing in the Recycle Bin ... it was empty so I couldn't actually see what was in it that totaled over a GB. If anyone understands what I'm talking about, what caused it and how can I prevent any "hidden" Recycle Bins from ever showing up again in the future. ... thanks,

Edited by duffy98
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Ok, I just discovered something today on one of my flash drives and I have some questions. Several years ago I bought two 4 GB Kingston DataTraveler flash drives or memory sticks. I only had Windows 98SE installed on my computers at the time. One of the flash drives has had this "hidden" Recycle Bin folder on it for some time but I am not sure when it first showed up on that drive ... the other drive, which is identical, does not have a "hidden" Recycle Bin on it. The flash drive with the "hidden" Recycle Bin is used almost daily but the other is not used very often ... mostly have it as a spare flash drive.

What I discovered today is that the drive with the "hidden" Recycle Bin was nearly full but looking at the items that I have on the flash drive ... I figured that all those items in no way totaled 4 GB so I checked the "hidden" Recycle Bin, which was empty, nothing visible inside it but when I right clicked on it to check Properties, it was showing over 1 GB of something in there. My Recycle Bin on my Desktop was empty. I searched around on Google and found others also having this same problem but with newer OSs like XP and maybe Vista. Some suggestions were to just reformat the flash drive but I had some things that I wanted to keep on the flash drive. Was only going to reformat as a last resort. I did learn about a program called iBin v2.9 (iBin is a portable recycle bin for USB flash drives.) I installed that program and was able to finally get rid of the "hidden" Recycle Bin and then I decided to move the items I wanted completely off the flash drive and do a reformat of the drive anyway.

I put those items back on the flash drive and have no "hidden" Recycle Bin showing. Just curious if anyone can explain how I probably got this "hidden" Recycle Bin on this flash drive in the first place ... since it isn't on the other identical 4 GB flash drive. I checked all my other flash drives, all were OK except for one Memorex 512 MB flash drive which also had the "hidden" Recycle Bin ... this 512 MB flash drive is used every day. These two flash drives (with the "hidden" Recycle Bin folder) are mostly connected to my Win 98SE computers but I have connected them both to XP machines occasionally. Could being connected to an XP machine have put this "hidden" Recycle Bin on my flash drives? I'm sure some of my other flash drives have been connected to an XP machine occasionally and they have no "hidden" Recycle Bin folders on them.

I don't want any Recycle Bin folders on my flash drives so I like to know how all this happened in the first place ... also, why (where) was there over a GB of "something" in the Recycle Bin of the 4 GB flash drive but there was nothing showing in the Recycle Bin ... it was empty so I couldn't actually see what was in it that totaled over a GB. If anyone understands what I'm talking about, what caused it and how can I prevent any "hidden" Recycle Bins from ever showing up again in the future. ... thanks,

Windows 98 creates Recycle bins on EVERY Drive present, except A: and B:, when you do certain operations. I'm not sure which ones.

You probably never had the second Flash Drive connected when this happened. The first one had more exposure.

I do not know if there is a way of stopping Windows from creating them. It has caused me enough aggravation when it wrote to a drive I didn't want written to.

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Thanks rloew for the information. I will keep an eye on those two flash drives as I use them to see if the "hidden" Recycle Bin folder shows up again. It wouldn't too bad of a problem if the Recycle Bin wasn't filled with over a GB of invisible something eating up flash drive space. I was reading about others getting the message that their flash drive was "full" when there should have been plenty of room for additional items to be added. It was the "hidden" Recycle Bin holding deleted invisible files.

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PROBLEMCHYLD ... I mentioned iBin earlier. I wasn't able to actually delete the "hidden" Recycle Bin but then I installed the iBin program and I was able to get rid of the Recycle Bin on the flash drive. In case anyone might want to work with this program, I will post a link. It might have some advantageous in keeping "invisible" deleted files from filling up a flash drive. I haven't worked with it enough to know. When I reformatted the flash drives, everything was wiped off the drive.

iBin v2.9

http://www.autohotkey.net/~FirstToyLab/project_iBin_download.htm

iBin Adds a Recycle Bin to Your Flash Drives

iBin is a small—700k—stand-alone portable application. Place it on your flash drive and run it to create the iBin folder that will be your portable recycle bin. If you have a large flash drive with a lot of files we'd suggest running it for the first time when you're not going anywhere. iBin indexes the entire drive to build a list of files it should protect and send to the recycle bin, it took about 10 minutes for the initial index of a 4GB drive at around 95% capacity with small documents and images.

Once iBin has finished the initial drive index it's quite snappy. It comes with a well written manual, but if you skip reading it at least note that in order to delete a file from the flash drive while iBin is running you'll need to hit WIN+DEL not just the delete key—iBin intercepts the standard delete if it is performed on a file it has indexed. All files you delete with iBin end up in X:\iBin\ where X is the letter of your flash drive. In the Custom Options menu of iBin you can specify what happens on deletion, how files are restored, how big the recycle bin should be, and if iBin should auto-clean the recycle bin.

iBin is freeware, Windows only.

...

Edited by duffy98
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"Hidden" Recycle Bin on Flash Drive may be created by some computer viruses that spread through flash drive. Was there a "Hidden" autorun.inf on a flash drive? I have found a couple of viruses in a "Hidden" Recycle Bin on my Flash Drive after a visit to a friend. And files being in use make this even more suspicious.

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"Hidden" Recycle Bin on Flash Drive may be created by some computer viruses that spread through flash drive. Was there a "Hidden" autorun.inf on a flash drive? I have found a couple of viruses in a "Hidden" Recycle Bin on my Flash Drive after a visit to a friend. And files being in use make this even more suspicious.

Conficker/DownadUp was one of the viruses that is known to create hidden recycle bins. Usually has a GUID on it that does not match the any of the user GUIDs of the host OS. Easier to spot that way.

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Good information about a possible virus residing on the flash drive. I did see on Google that some message boards brought the virus possibility up also ... but then the person said they ran a virus check and nothing turned up, just that the Recycle Bin was eating of a lot of flash drive space. I ran a virus check on my computer (negative) but not on the flash drive, stupid on my part, wasn't thinking it might be a virus on the drive. If the "hidden" Recycle Bin does show up again, I will give the flash drive a quick scan. It does seem suspicious that the "hidden" Recycle Bin was holding over a GB of something. This is probably understood by most of you who are more into the real inside workings of an OS. I just don't understand how a GB of "something could be completely invisible. I had the setting set to "unhide" all hidden items ... so that is one level down, now is there also another level of "more hidden items" in an OS? I deleted everything off that drive eventually and only that hidden Recycle Bin was left still showing over a GB of space being used ... there wasn't anything visible in that folder. A reformat did wipe the drive clean and I got all the space back on the drive. Unless that was a "program" called Recycle Bin that was over a GB in size. Well, I just noticed all this yesterday when I tried to put a few items on the drive and it said the drive was full, when it shouldn't have been. I was wondering if anyone here also had a "hidden" Recycle Bin showing up on any of their drives. I will be on the watch from now on for any strange stuff showing up on my flash drives.

M()zart ... in answer to your question about a "Hidden" autorun.inf" also on the drive ... there was something else there but I don't remember exactly what it was. I was able to delete it, just couldn't delete the "hidden" Recycle Bin folder.

...

Edited by duffy98
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