Earn more, learn more, and realise your potential Mobile Technology email newsletter Get ZDNet's mobile news and reviews. By default, Windows sets your Recycle Bin to take up ten percent of your hard disk. A few years ago, hard disks weren't even that big. Even with a 6-gig disk it's going to take a hefty chunk of space that could be better used elsewhere.
Nobody needs that much room to store deleted files.
But you can still shrink the Recycle Bin somewhat and reclaim some much-needed hard disk space. Right-click on the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop. Click on Properties. Tick the box that says 'Use One Setting for All Drives' and move the slider bar down to one percent, tick Apply, then tick OK, to get nearly ten percent of your hard disk space back.