I turned mine off for a while. I got tired of having to dump everything twice. And if you often delete whole directories at a time, like with some special project that’s finished, then the recycle bin is just as annoying as those popups that ask you if you “really” want to delete something everytime you really want to delete something.

If you think twice before deleting something, there’s your first and second chances.

Hi Tim,
The recycle bin is for those who can’t think twice.
Thanks for the comment.

I’d turn off the recycle bin if I wanted to make sure that what I had deleted was, in fact, deleted, and not preserved on tape. If my recycle buckets are backed up as part of a routine machine (or share) backup, then if I forget to empty the bucket then my deleted files will be written to tape, presumably that night and perhaps on other nights as well, depending upon backup strategies, and preserved for discovery.

If the files are not there, then they won’t be backed up. It’s a risk balance problem of the cost of a short term goof up (raised chance of irreversibly deleting an important file) vs. a long term blunder (lowered chance of finding incriminating information) with major lifestyle (financial, social, or political) impact.

Weak deletion is a flaw with most disk CDP (continuous data protection) technologies: One can’t really excise a file that one wants to obliterate.

But perhaps this is just ego talking. To quote the Bard: “What’s done is done and can’t be undone.”

Hello Andy,
Thanks for the comment. Ron

i have always disabled mine, and is because the recylce bin is annoying when you delete tons of files like me it gets very big, and its annoying to have to delete things twice…

I made a post earlier under a similar topic - how to disable the recycle bin using the registry.
I would submit that not everyone wants the recycle bin to be disabled for every delete, on the chance that a “needed” file might have been inadvertently deleted.
There is a carryover technique from the Win95/98 era that works just as well without having to go and empty the recylce bin after a delete or mucking around in the registry.
Simply holding down the SHIFT key when deleting 1 or more files will allow the user to bypass the recycle bin for that instance. That way if you are absolutely sure, then the delete becomes “permanent”. Otherwise all other delete functions will just be stored in the recycle bin.
You will still receive confirmation regarding the current delete action, but that in itself is a minor inconvenience and a probably a neccessity for those who really need to think twice.

I disable it because I often delete large files from external hard drives on my laptop, while my C drive is already quite full. Having a delete operation halt because the drive is full is annoying, and even more annoying is forgetting to empty it and wondering why you’re low on disk space.

And yes, I know it supposedly keeps the files on that drive, but from what I’ve experienced that’s just not true.