By default, Windows reserves a whopping 10% of each drive volume for storing files you’ve deleted. But how often do you really need to recover a 50GB file from the Recycle Bin?
Most of the time all those extra space reserved for the recycle bin goes wasted. For example, for a 500GB drive, the default space allocated would be 50GB (10%). You would hardly ever need that kind of size for the Recycle Bin. To prevent wastage, you can reduce the space allocated for recycle bin to whatever amount you think is right. Here is how to do it.
Right-click the Recycle Bin and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. If you only have one drive, or if you have multiple drives and want them to all have the same setting, just slide the slider (under the Global tab) to the left until you get the percentage you think is appropriate. Say, if you have a 500GB drive, 2% or 10 GB should be fine (or even 1%-5GB) should be sufficient.
If you have multiple drives and you want a different percentage of space reserved for each drive, click the Configure Drives Independently radio button. Then click each drive’s tab at the top of the dialog box and adjust the slider for each drive.
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There are more ways to recover disk space. Perhaps you would like to read this
http://www.instantfundas.com/2007/11/9-places-where-you-could-lose-hard-disk.html