Can you scan the Recycle Bin for Duplicate Files ...

[ajuabrenda]

Windows 7

Had a corrupted Documents which created thousands of files in Documents and not in My Documents folders. I want to restore them now that the corruption has been fixed. There are many duplicates with the path to the right folders in My Documents. Is there a way to scan the Recycle Bin so I can delete the duplicates before I restore files?

[DigitalVolcano]

I think the files in the Recycler folder are stored in a special way, with the files being renamed and an additional data file created for each file containing path information, etc.

Duplicate Cleaner won't read this correctly, and you may corrupt the files if you try removing them.

[therube]

On XP I scan Recycle Bin regularly, comparing against known existing directory trees on my HDD.
Now Recycle Bin file names will not compare (because as stored, they're meaningless, to us), but if you do a content compare, name is immaterial.

On Win7, I see I have never used Recycle Bin ($Recycle.Bin) - until just now.
Can't imagine how anything could be messed up by doing likewise?

Actually there seems to be something weird going on in Win7, just not sure what?
Something like the file itself is stored, then an associated "attribute" file (that holds, at least, the original filename & path).

So on Win7 I'd be hesitant until exploring more, having a clear understanding on just what is happening.

[DigitalVolcano]

Interesting article here on the nuts and bolts of the Win 7 recycle bin.
http://dereknewton.com/2010/06/recycle- ... and-vista/

[RandyBonnette]

Hello,

Is it possible to renew the files from the recycle bin into one separate folder and then scan the folder with the Duplicate Cleaner? I've read a lot about Magnet Forensics tools to recover the files from Windows Recycle Bin, but I decided to find the easier way out and perhaps change the recycle bin settings (if it's possible).

[therube]

Renew?

Anyhow, just what is it that you're looking to do?


You can certainly copy the files out, if that's that you want to do.
But then DC can simply scan the directory directly, if that meets your needs.

DC should find duplicates of the $R files or any files within subdirectories of $Recycle.Bin.
It would not find any $I files, as they are created by the deletion process itself, when files are sent to the Recycle Bin.