Resizing your Recycle Bin's Capacity

Some people tend to stuff a lot of supposed "junk files" in their Recycle Bin, and when they realized that there is a renewed need for those junk files, they could easily restore it. Some people are extremely certain in what they would like to remove from their PCs, and will not bother recovering anything once they stuffed them in the Recycle Bin. Either way, the Recycle Bin can be home for both "definite junk files" waiting to be emptied or "possibly useful junk files" waiting to be restored.

Microsoft gives users the honorable privilege to customize their Windows based on their needs and habits. One of them is the option of resizing the capacity of their Recycle Bin.

It's a pretty straightforward customization option: either to increase or decrease the capacity of the Recycle Bin. If you're someone who knows what you're doing, a possible figure amounting to 98% of the junk files in your Recycle Bin are mostly there for deletion purpose. However, if you're someone who are unsure of the usability of the supposed junk file that you deleted to the Recycle Bin, and might wish to restore some of them for use in the future, then your way forward is clear.

Adjusting the capacity is relatively simple, but some users might not have discovered this particular option. On the other hand, things are always slightly different between XP and Vista.


Here's how to do it on Vista:

1. Right-click on your desktop's Recycle Bin

2. Select 'Properties'

3. On the 'Recycle Bin Properties' window, find the 'settings for selected location' category. Under 'custom size' adjust your capacity based on Megabytes (MB)


4. Some people are very. very sure of what they want to delete. Therefore, the second option, 'Remove files immediately when deleted' are simply the best there is! If you're that kind of users, then just change from 'custom size' option to that option. It's that simple...:)


This is how to do it in XP:

1. Right-click on your Recycle Bin icon

2. Select 'Properties'

3. On the 'Recycle Bin Properties' window, make sure that you're on the 'Global' tab instead of the 'Local Disk' tab. By default, the selected option is the 'Use one setting for all drives' option. From here, you can adjust the capacity of your Recycle Bin.


4. If you are someone who is very sure of what you're doing when deleting a file, then just check the box 'Remove files immediately when deleted'.