Vista - $Recycle.bin on secondary drive?

Just ran bit defender and got this weird message; first time I've seen it. To check things out I booted into safe mode and took a look at F; there are in fact two recycle bins, both empty. F isn't my boot drive, so why are they there as opposed to C? Safe to delete? Why would my av say they're password protected?


F:\$RECYCLE.BIN\S-1-5-21-107255181-2300089596-226732030-1000\$RP8IZOX.rar=]:Zone.Identifier Password-Protected No action was possible

Never mind; fixed the problem.

Hi Fumz,

What happened there - just so we know in case we come across it again.

Thanks

SIW2

Well I first thought I caught something, but after booting into safe mode and seeing that there were no files there I figured it must have been a bug with the latest Bit Defender update. All I did to get around the password-protected message was take ownership of the folder.

I still wonder why there's a recycle bin on F though?

Just looked on my 2nd hard drive, D:, and I have the same folder as well, %RECYCLE.BIN.

Yeah, it's odd. Mine says the folder was created 1/3/09; however, that drive was installed several months ago.

Also, when looking at the folder by telling Windows to show system files, there aren't two recycle bins, just one. There's a second folder, named, "S-1-5-21-107255181-2300089596-226732030-1000", which is also present in my recycle bin folder on C... as opposed to looking at the folder in safe mode, which shows 2 recycle bin icons.

You will have a separate recycle bin for each hard drive or array on your system, including external drives. The following should, I hope, go some way to explaining why this is the case.

Deleting a file is actually in 2 stages. You can skip the first stage of this procedure by pressing Shift as you delete - in this case, you move directly to the second stage of removing the pointer to the initial sector of the file. The first stage simply changes the location pointer of the file to point to the recycle bin instead of its original location (this pointer is saved to enable the file to be restored). Note that the file in question stays on the HDD, and can only be restored on that drive. The chain of sectors in the file is maintained unchanged. The second stage of deleting the file from the recycle bin removes the pointer to the initial sector of the file. As before, the chain of sectors in the file is maintained and can be used by recovery programs to recover such files. However, if the HDD wants to make use of any of these sectors for another file, it is able to do so. This is why such software should be installed prior to you needing it.

Thanks for the explanation, Dwarf. That solves the mystery of the phantom recycle bin

Thanks Dwarf.