Redirected My Documents and RECYCLER

[azrael78]

Hey all,

Just hit upon this annoyance (we'e only just noticed it).

We have redirected student folders via DFS - however we seem to have lots of RECYCLER folders, almost like a network-recycle-bin.

Is there any way to turn this off as it's using up their quota when they believe they are deleting things.

Thanks,

Az

[Gatt]

Ok just read the topic title as
Redirect My Documents to Recycler!!

Anyway, I dont know of anyway to redirect the recycler as thats a system folder
Isn't there a GPO to perma-delete files and not send to the recycler?

[azrael78]

Ok just read the topic title as
Redirect My Documents to Recycler!!

Anyway, I dont know of anyway to redirect the recycler as thats a system folder
Isn't there a GPO to perma-delete files and not send to the recycler?

Now your mis-read was amusing... I like that idea rather alot

In any case, yeah you can disable the recycle bin via GPO but if I do that - it disables it locally too which is fine and well but people delete files and then say 'Uuuuh I didnt mean to delete that...' and are reliant on the recycle bin.

I wonder who's great idea it was to turn on network-based recycle-bins and then not include a method to turn it off?

Az

[Gatt]

Why not enable the Volume Shadow Copy Service (aka Previous Versions)?
You can set the schedule so it backs up regularly - though dont set it too often! lol
And tell them to be very careful when deleting!

[AngryTechnician]

This bugged me for a long time at my last school. One day after asking one of our more prolific students to empty his 2GB recycle bin, he asked why we didn't empty them automatically via a script. I replied that I would only be comfortable deleting files after they had been in the recycle bin for a certain amount of time (e.g. after 30 days), but that I didn't know any way to programmatically retrieve the deletion date of an item in the recycle bin.

Two weeks later the crafty bugger had found a way to do it, and the attached login script is the end result.

Caveats/info:

• This was written by a student, with some minor modifications and refactoring by me. Neither of us are professional programmers. We used it in my previous school without incident, but use at your own risk.
• This script will delete data (of course), but potentially not the data you intend if it goes wrong. Test before deploying to a production environment.
• By default, files deleted for more than 30 days will be removed. This is adjustable via the MIN_AGE_TO_DELETE constant in the script.
• A log of deleted files/folders is created in the Application Data directory.
• Tested on XP and Vista, but not Windows 7.

This more than anything else taught me the value of utilising the keen and able students you have at your school. I wasn't able to give him any academic credit for the work, but I did send home a formal letter of commendation to his parents.

[azrael78]

Why not enable the Volume Shadow Copy Service (aka Previous Versions)?
You can set the schedule so it backs up regularly - though dont set it too often! lol
And tell them to be very careful when deleting!

This bugged me for a long time at my last school. One day after asking one of our more prolific students to empty his 2GB recycle bin, he asked why we didn't empty them automatically via a script. I replied that I would only be comfortable deleting files after they had been in the recycle bin for a certain amount of time (e.g. after 30 days), but that I didn't know any way to programmatically retrieve the deletion date of an item in the recycle bin.

Two weeks later the crafty bugger had found a way to do it, and the attached login script is the end result.

Caveats/info:

• This was written by a student, with some minor modifications and refactoring by me. Neither of us are professional programmers. We used it in my previous school without incident, but use at your own risk.
• This script will delete data (of course), but potentially not the data you intend if it goes wrong. Test before deploying to a production environment.
• By default, files deleted for more than 30 days will be removed. This is adjustable via the MIN_AGE_TO_DELETE constant in the script.
• A log of deleted files/folders is created in the Application Data directory.
• Tested on XP and Vista, but not Windows 7.

This more than anything else taught me the value of utilising the keen and able students you have at your school. I wasn't able to give him any academic credit for the work, but I did send home a formal letter of commendation to his parents.

Thanks for this guys.

Have been instructed by manglement to progmatically clear them as we don't want the users getting to them. (They can't really anyhow as they are hidden)

Shadow copies would be nice but with the current setup we have, it may not be the best solution - boss is also against VSS

Az

[Gatt]

...boss is also against VSS

Can I ask why?

[azrael78]

He's rather keep the whole 'restore from backup' facility inside the IT department as he doesn't entirely trust the end users to not restore over what they currently are working on.

Az

[chrisredfield93]

Well when I was doing my apprenticship the school had volume shadow copy, but only select staff had it, and the pupils and the non seleted staff cant do it. Also found this was handy with profiles too

[srochford]

By default, "my documents" always gets a recycle bin, even on the network. You can either tidy up after the event using a script like the one above or you can turn it off altogether - look up NukeOnDelete (serious registry value!!)

[elsiegee40]

Shadow copies would be nice but with the current setup we have, it may not be the best solution - boss is also against VSS

Az

We have Volume Shadow Copt, but I don't advertise it's there. It's Mrs Gee's bit of magic recovering data that's been deleted or lost... I really don't want my users to become dependent on it to make up for their incapabilities.

As for clearing things out. I already have a script (via edugeek) for clearing out cookies more than 30 days old... I shall be testing this one for the recycler. Ta!

[chazzy2501]

To bring this thread alive again I've run into this issue today and it's really easy to resolve. On the file server just check the recycle bins properties and you can control the amount of space the (recycler) folder takes up or even turn it off. Incase someone already knows this can they tell me if it will now automatically remove the recycler contents for me or do I have to remove them myself?

[AngryTechnician]

That setting only applies to all users on Server 2003. On 2008 it was changed to a per-user setting. However, there is a per-user Group Policy setting to control it:

User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Explorer, Maximum allowed Recycle Bin size