Did you know that when you delete a document, photo, or any file in Windows XP that it is not gone? Not gone yet anyway. When you delete an item it is sent to the Recycle Bin. It will remain there until you clean out your Recycle Bin or you fill up your Recycle Bin and Windows will delete older items for newer deleted items.
A full Recycle Bin can also cause your system to run sluggish and take up space. If you have a smaller hard drive or need more space on your hard drive, the Recycle Bin is a good place to start some house cleaning.
Windows XP allocates 10% of your hard drive to the Recycle Bin by default. So if you fill up your Recycle Bin, you are not able to use 10% of your hard drive. On a 200GB hard drive, that is 20GB of space, which is substantial.
I like to set the Recycle Bin size to 2%. That is a small and manageable size, and if I forget to clean out my Recycle Bin, the system will purge old files to make room for new items.
To set the properties of the Recycle Bin, go to your desktop, Windows key + D. Right click the Recycle Bin and select properties.
Once the properties box opens, just move the slider to the desired setting. See below.
