Limit recycle bin network drive

I have a NAS (Promise NS4300) which is used by several XP systems as a
backup device. The box runs a firmware version of Linux and presents
a SAMBA interface to Windows. A backup quit early this morning when
utilization reached 99.9%. Yet, the sum of all allocated space on the
Terabyte server was less than 20%. 800 GB appeared to be missing.
After much thrashing around today, I discovered almost all of the
missing space was in the .RECYCLER subfolder of the BACKUPS folder on
the NAS. It contained dozens of 6-12GB-sized old backups.

(I have read several places on the web that XP does not maintain a
backup folder on networked drives, but this information apparently is
incorrect WRT SAMBA drives.)

I really don't need an archive of dozens of old backups of massive
size, so am wondering how to prevent this. The deletes are done using
a batch file that consists of NET USE, DEL xxx, NET USE /DELETE.

XP has an option to limit the size of the recycle bin on an individual
drive basis. The main recycle bin is set at 10% for all drives. There
does not appear to be any support of this for networked drives. I
seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand,
XP appears to view these drives as its own when moving them to the
recycler folder, but OTOH, the recycle bin manager app refuses
ownership of the problem.

Does anyone kow of any way to A) stop recycling on a networked
"drive", or B) limit the size of the recycle bin for a networked
drive? (From the client side)

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:48:17 -0800 (PST), AZShuttler
<frontpage@paragondandd.com> wrote:

>(I have read several places on the web that XP does not maintain a
>backup folder on networked drives, but this information apparently is
>incorrect WRT SAMBA drives.)
>

Like you read, wIndows can't do it.

Some googling threw up this small snippet in configuring the samba
configuration file (smb.conf) for recycling. Perhaps you can configure
your backup device in a similar manner.
http://secaudi.com/accent/?p=18


Jim.

On Feb 14, 11:58 pm, James Egan <je...@jegan.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:48:17 -0800 (PST), AZShuttler
>
> <frontp...@paragondandd.com> wrote:
> >(I have read several places on the web that XP does not maintain a
> >backup folder on networked drives, but this information apparently is
> >incorrect WRT SAMBA drives.)
>
> Like you read, wIndows can't do it.
>
> Some googling threw up this small snippet in configuring the samba
> configuration file (smb.conf) for recycling. Perhaps you can configure
> your backup device in a similar manner.http://secaudi.com/accent/?p=18
>
> Jim.

Thanks for the pointer. I eventually concluded it was Linux that was
recycling the thing, not XP. Unfortunately, the Linux is in firmware,
so I don't have access to the conf files. The box presents a password
protected web interface for management functions which does not
include anything about recycling. I will take the matter up with
Promise. Hopefully they will enhance the interface to deal with
recycling in a future service release of the firmware. They seem to
be responsive to problems and suggestions. They have just added a
DLNA plugin package.

As a workaround, I have set a quota on the space allotted to backups.
This will at least elbow me to take action before the box runs totally
out of space. Another possibility is to change my BAT file to kill
the .RECYCLE subfolder every time it deletes a backup.