Where is the Recycle Bin on USB and how to Recover Data?

I have a flash drive I use on multiple PCs.  When I work, I may delete files (mostly photos).  But if I move to another PC, there is no Recycle Bin to restore the deleted files from. Can anyone please help me locate the Recycle Bin on USB?

- User Query from Microsoft

Yes, you can locate the Recycle Bin on the USB Flash drive. You might have encountered a similar issue. Many people practice taking a backup of their data on a USB flash drive; you might have saved your important files on it, such as documents, photos, videos, Office files, audio files, and many more. Due to various reasons, you might end up deleting them from your USB flash drive. If you ever wonder why the deleted files are not in the Recycle Bin? Or where do deleted files from the USB drive go? Then you have landed on the perfect post. 

Where is the Recycle Bin on the USB drive?

USB flash drive has its own Recycle Bin, and locating it on a USB is never a difficult task. However, Recycle Bin on a USB drive exists with different names based on its file system and the version of the Windows Operating System you are using.

If you are looking to access Recycle Bin on an external hard drive or USB drive to recover deleted files, then you should not add any new files or update the existing data on it. This is to avoid overwriting and thereby increase the chances of recovering deleted files from a USB drive.

Following are the names of Recycle Bin depending on the USB file system:

• On FAT file systems, it’s \RECYCLED.
• On NTFS file systems, it’s \RECYCLER (excluding Windows Vista).
• On NTFS file systems on Windows Vista, it’s \$Recycle.Bin.

How to Enable Recycle Bin on USB Flash drive on Windows 10?

• To enable the Recycle Bin feature on USB, we must make changes to the Windows registry. As we all know, the registry is critical to the Windows Operating System.
• Go to Registry Editor by Running regedit and click on the OK.

• Navigate to the Registry location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.

• Now right click on it and select the New tab and select DWORD 32-bit Value.
• Double-click the new key RecycleBinDrives (or right-click on it and select Modify), change the Value data to ffffffff (8 F’s), and then click OK.

• Every deleted file on the USB will now be routed to its own Recycle Bin. The size of the USB itself determines the maximum size of your USB Recycle Bin. When you plug in a USB, you can also Restore those deleted data from the Recycle Bin.

How to Recover Deleted files from a USB drive, not in Recycle Bin?

Make use of the USB Recovery tool by Remo to recover any deleted files from the USB not in Recycle BIn or any Shift+Delete files or if your files have been bypassed from the Recycle Bin.

Remo Recover is a powerful tool that can get back more than 500 file formats like photos, videos, raw images, documents, Office files, audio files, and PDFs. The tool works seamlessly on even corrupt or damaged USBs, SD cards, or any external storage devices.

Steps to Recover files from a USB drive using Remo Recover software

Step 1: Download and install Remo Recover on your computer and connect the USB drive to your computer and follow the steps below to recover files from the USB drive.

Step 2: Now select the drive from where you want to restore deleted files from.

Step 3: Click on the Scan option to initiate the scanning process.

Note: Click on the Dynamic Tree View to view the recovered files.

Step 4:  Select the files which you want to restore, and click on the Recover option to get back the recovered files to the desired location.

Is it Possible to Delete the $RECYCLE.BIN folder?

Yes, it is possible to remove the $RECYCLE.BIN folder, but there is a catch, you can entirely remove the $RECYCLE.BIN folder if you have access to Admin mode. Or you can also try to remove it using the Linux LiveCD. However, Windows will automatically recreate the $RECYCLE.BIN folder once you delete all the files. 

Conclusion: 

Recycle Bin usually keeps the deleted files for 30 days; later, these files get deleted by themselves. Or the files get deleted until you empty them. In case your files have been permanently deleted or got bypassed from the Recycle Bin, then you need to stop adding any new data to your drive immediately. Adding new data might result in overwriting the drive. Hence we recommend you recover data using Remo Recover.   

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