Find Recycle Bin location and clear down with Powershell

Question: I use Powershell extensively to manage SQL Server and the Windows OS. A common problem is to identify location of the  Windows Recycle Bin and clear the contents down - particuarly if there is a space issue. 

How can I locate the Windows Recycle Bin and clear it down?

Answer: This Powershell code will iterate through every local drive and identify if a Recycle Bin exists, and display the location. It's handy to iterate through all drives as the RecycleBin can be located on multiple drives . Typically - it's a hidden file so they can be configured across multiple drives

$Drives = get-wmiobject win32_volume | ? { $_.DriveType -eq 3 } | % { get-psdrive  $_.DriveLetter[0] }
foreach($Drive in $Drives) {
Get-ChildItem  $Drive':' -Directory -Hidden -Filter '$REC*' -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ft Name,FullName
}

The code above focuses on identifying the location of the RecycleBin. Now we look at the Clearing down the Recycle Bin. Since Powershell v 5 - there is a new cmdlet called - Clear-RecycleBin.

An example of using this cmdlet is :

--Example 1: clear down a Recycle Bin from a sepecific drive letter,This method will prompt you for an action, such as :

Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing the operation "Clear-RecycleBin" on target "All of the contents of the Recycle Bin for the 'E:\' drive".
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): y

Clear-RecycleBin -DriveLetter D

--Example 2: clear down the Recycle Bin across all the local drives

Clear-RecycleBin -Force

If you want to automate the process of clearing down the Recycle Bin , then you can combine the the first code with the Clear-RecycleBin . BEWARE this will clear down all Recycle Bins across all the local drives

Example 3: combine identifying the local drives and clear down the Recycle Bin 

$Drives = get-wmiobject win32_volume | ? { $_.DriveType -eq 3 } | % { get-psdrive  $_.DriveLetter[0] }
foreach($Drive in $Drives) {
Get-ChildItem  $Drive':' -Directory -Hidden -Filter '$REC*' -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ft Name,FullName
Clear-RecycleBin -DriveLetter $Drive -Force
}

--Open Powershell and type this command , to open the Recycle Bin 

start shell:RecycleBinFolder

Read More on Powershell 

Powershell Get-ChildItem with examples