Storage forum: External hard drive has recycle bin--how to access?

If all drives have a common recycle bin, then why doesn't the recycle bin have a file I just deleted from my hard drive?

The default may be set to one Recycle Bin for all drives. That does NOT mean that this is physically the case. Read on:

1. if you disconnect an external drive before it is finished processing, then the Recycle Bin folders on that drive may become detached from the host machine's Recycle Bin and cannot be accessed thereafter. You will then end up with "deleted" files in Recycle Bin folders on the external drive which are STILL USING SPACE on the external drive, AND with NO ACCESS from the host or any other machine.

2. If you manually configure each drives Recycle Bin Properties seperately, then each drive will have it's own Recycle Bin with varying percentages of teach drive being used.

it sounds like you have a Recycle Bin which has become detached from the host machine's Recycle Bin. Whatever is in it is now unavailable and will NOT appear in the host machine's Recycle Bin. The space will never be recovered from the external drive.

One solution to this problme is this:

1. Do NOT do this unless you are technical and/or very sure of what you are doing. First ensure you are an adminstrator user.

2. Bring up File Explorer (Windows Key + E). In the Menus, go to Tools - Folder Options - View. Scroll down and select "Show hidden files and folders", and also un-select "Hide operating system files".

3. Now click on the external drive in the left panel "Folders". You should see at least one or both of these: $RECYCLE.BIN and RECYCLER. They will contain one or more subfolders which cannot be viewed while windows is running called something like: "S-1-5-21-3173086387-2615592467-1408983588-1000".

4. For each of the two top level folders the process to remove them completely is the same.

a. Right-Click each top level folder and select properties. Un-select "Read-Only" and click OK, then click OK to do same to all sub-folders. Wait til done.

b. Do same for each sub-folder inside each top-level folder.

c. Delete each top level folder and click OK to do same to all.

5. Bring up File Explorer (Windows Key + E). In the Menus, go to Tools - Folder Options - View. Scroll down and select "Do not show hidden files and folders", and also select "Hide operating system files".

Now you will have all that unused space clogging up a useless Recycle Bin available again.

Hope this resolves your problem. I've just run into this problem myself on a 750Gb drive and recovered 38GB of wasted space.
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You may then want to consider your options with your external drive's Recycle Bin:

i) Right-Click on the main Recycle Bin and select Properties. On the Global Tab you can select "Configure drives independently". If you do you will then be able to set the Maximum size of the Recycle Bin on each logical drive (partition). You may also set files to bypass the Recycle Bin altogeter for that logical drive.

Hello Luap_42

I have this exact problem, except that my Iomega is specifically a Mac EHB.

I do have VMWare, but since it it Mac formatted, this detailed process won't apply to me. Do you have ANY suggestions on how to achieve the same end solution of emptying the detached Trash files from the EHD using Terminal Mac commands? My Time capsule is enroute, as I recently moved back to the US-hence why I was using this EHB as a temporary back-up. Directly deleting the back-up file from the drive is what caused this issue.......

I've done a lot of research on Mac forums and nothing has worked.

Any help is greatly appreciated.