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ltdev
Asked: 2018-03-22 13:12:34 +0800 CST

External hardrive containing folders hidden on windows

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I have plugged an external hard drive and I get some folders ($RECYCLE.BIN and System Volume Information) that on Windows are hidden, refer to my screenshot. I'm not sure whether its safe to delete them but is there a way to hide these folders on Ubuntu too?

enter image description here

directory 16.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can delete those folders, it won't hurt anything, but Windows will put them back every time it touches that drive.

    If you plan on using both Windows and Ubuntu with this hard drive, you may want to create a .hidden file on the root of the drive. Inside this file, write the names of files you want your file manager to hide, like this:

    $RECYCLE.BIN
System Volume Information

    then save it and restart the file manager. Note that this only works with certain linux file managers; also, if your Windows PC is set to show hidden files, the .hidden file may show up in File Explorer.

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  2. EDIT

    Okay, Ian Klug's answer is much shorter and to the point. Feel free to skip mine hahahah.

    What are they?

    $RECYCLE.BIN is the location for the Recycle Bin. It has a folder with the contents of your Recycle Bin, and metadata for those files (icon, original path, and so). Every storage partition plugged into Windows will have one (your main drive too). The Recycle Bin folder view allows you to see the contents of the $RECYCLE.BIN from every drive currently plugged.

    I've never looked much into System Volume Information, but there's an old Microsoft article and a Wikipedia article that talk a bit about it.

    They're, by default, hidden in Windows, but you can configure your folder explorer to see them.

    Are they safe to delete?

    Removing them from your main drive (the drive where you installed Windows) might be fatal. Deleting them from your external drive shouldn't cause any problem, though.

    The Recycle Bin only contains files you disposed of (by dragging them there or by pressing Delete) but didn't actually delete yet. If you are sure that all the files there are trash, you can delete the whole folder.

    If you want to check if there's something useful, just open it. Your deleted files aren't encrypted in any way, they're normal files in a subfolder in $RECYCLE.BIN. (There might be a weird file outside any subfolders, but it's just metadata for the deleted files). You can cut and paste the useful files from there, then delete the rest of the folder.

    I've deleted System Volume Information from my external drives many times and never had any trouble either. In an external drive, it should contain logs from chkdsk and little else. (I might edit this post later, when I do some tests with a pen drive).

    Deleting it will definitely not affect your Windows partition, definitely not break your disk partition, and it should not affect your data in the disk. (Maybe if you use a weird Windows-specific encryption or backup program, but if you can read your files in Linux, that's unlikely).

    If you're still unsure, just copy them somewhere else or rename them. They're normal folders and files like any other, restoring them to the disk will undo any damage.

    Can you hide it? (your actual question)

    Hm... Linux doesn't have a “Hidden” file attribute like Windows. Linux programs treat a file (or folder) as hidden when its name starts with a dot (.).

    Renaming then to include the dot will hide it, but the next time you plug your hard drive into Windows, it will create again $RECYCLE.BIN and System Volume Information (while leaving .$RECYCLE.BIN and System Volume Information intact).

    To hide $RECYCLE.BIN and System Volume Information you need to configure your folder system to recognise those names, and hide them (but you'll still see them from the command line).

    You're using the default file manager for Ubuntu 16.04... that's Nautilus, right?

    You're in luck. I really thought you'd need to install an extension until I found this. It's for an older version of Nautilus, and I can't test it, either (I'm using Ubuntu 17.10) so you'll have to try a bit on your own.

    Now what's the .Trash folder?

    If you see a .Trash or .Trash-1000 folder while in Windows, that's the same phenomenon in reverse: Nautilus installed a Recycle Bin in your drive and it's not hidden in Windows. You can still delete it safely.

    I haven't seen that name in years, so I'm not sure if there's still any program that does that, but it might happen.

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