About SharePoint Recycle Bin Storage

The SharePoint Recycle Bin is a crucial feature for managing deleted files and data. While it provides a safety net for accidentally deleted items, it’s important to understand its impact on your storage capacity. This article explores how the SharePoint Recycle Bin operates and its implications for your storage limits.

SharePoint
SharePoint

How Does SharePoint Recycle Bin Count Against Storage?

Yes, the SharePoint Recycle Bin does count against your storage quota. The Recycle Bin is divided into two stages:

  • First-Stage Recycle Bin: When items are deleted, they initially move to the First-Stage Recycle Bin. These items continue to consume storage space. 
  • Second-Stage Recycle Bin: If items are not permanently deleted from the First-Stage Recycle Bin, they move to the Second-Stage Recycle Bin. They still count towards your storage quota until they are permanently removed.
File Trash
File Trash

The Recycle Bin plays a critical role in SharePoint storage management by providing a means for data recovery. However, items in both stages of the Recycle Bin continue to count towards your total storage limit. In other words, deleted items that remain in the Recycle Bin can consume a significant portion of your available storage, especially if large files or numerous documents are involved. This can lead to unexpected storage shortages, affecting your ability to store new files and documents.

Manage SharePoint Recycle Bin Storage Effectively

SharePoint’s storage is finite, and every file, including those in the Recycle Bin, contributes to the overall storage usage. Both the First-Stage and Second-Stage Recycle Bins count towards the total storage quota. To manage your storage effectively, it's important to regularly review and purge unnecessary items from these bins. 

  • Regular Cleanup: Schedule regular cleanups to remove outdated or unnecessary items from the Recycle Bin.
  • Retention Policies: Implement retention policies that automatically purge items from the Recycle Bin after a set period.

Summary

As described above, the Recycle bin does count against the SharePoint storage. So, it is important to implement some strategies such as regular scheduled cleanups and setting up retention. If necessary, consider increasing storage limits to accommodate your organization’s data needs while maintaining efficient storage management.

Besides, you can transfer some seldom-used files you don't want to move to recycle bin from SharePoint to another cloud storage as backup, and then permanently delete them from SharePoint. For this task, MultCloud is a perfect solution. It is famous for its powerful functions:

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