Thursday, May 27, 2010

Reclaiming disk space on an external USB drive

This article is for users running Microsoft Windows OS.

* Disclaimer: before executing these actions described below, make sure that you understand these delete data that you may otherwise need. I hold no responsibility for any loss of your data.

At times, you may store and delete files on an external USB drive formatted with NTFS partition. Then over time, you realize that the available disk space on your USB drive keeps getting less and less even though you know that you should have more than what's occupied on the disk. The reason is that your deleted files may have been moved to a folder call $Recycle.Bin on the root of your USB drive.

To reclaim is, open the command prompt, and change the drive letter to your USB drive. For example, if you USB drive letter is F:, type:

Then run this command to remove the directory completely:

rd /s F:\$Recycle.Bin

Confirm the action when prompted.

If you do not know how to find the drive letter, open your My Computers from your Windows desktop and note down the drive letter of your external drive.

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