This script allows you to get the disk space used by the Recycle Bin items on a shared folder.
It can be very useful and interesting if you run it on a file server where the user home drives are defined.
Script :
$sharedfolder='\\nas_server\home' New-PSDrive -name "nasdrive" -PSProvider FileSystem -Root $sharedfolder Get-ChildItem -Path "nasdrive:" -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ` ? {$_.name -match 'recycle.bin'} | ` % {gci -Recurse $_.fullname } | ` % {$total += $_.length } $total_in_MB=$total/1024/1024 write-host "The total size of the items located in the RecycleBin folders is : $total_in_MB MB" Remove-PSDrive -Name "nasdrive"
References
Get the items and child items in a folder or registry key. (dir / ls / gci)
Syntax Get-ChildItem [ [-path] string[] | [-literalPath] string[] ] [[-filter] string] [-include string[]] [-exclude string[]] [-name] [-recurse] [-force] [-UseTransaction] [CommonParameters] Key -path string The paths to the items from which content is to be retrieved. Wildcards are permitted. Default is the current directory (.) -literalPath string Like Path above, only the value is used exactly as typed. No characters are interpreted as wildcards. If the path includes any escape characters then enclose the path in single quotation marks. -include string Include only the specified items from the Path. e.g. 'May*' -exclude string Omit the specified items from the Path e.g. '*SS64*' -filter string A filter in the provider's format or language. The exact syntax of the filter (wildcard support etc) depends on the provider. Filters are more efficient than -include/-exclude, because the provider applies the filter when retrieving the objects, rather than having PowerShell filter the objects after they are retrieved. -name Retrieve only the names of the items. This is useful when piping the names of the child items to another command. -recurse Get the items plus all child items of the location(s). Only for paths that point to a container such as C:\Windows or C:\Windows\* A path such as *.txt will not have any child items. -force Get all items including hidden or system files, but will not override security/file permissions. -UseTransaction Include the command in the active transaction. CommonParameters: -Verbose, -Debug, -ErrorAction, -ErrorVariable, -WarningAction, -WarningVariable, -OutBuffer -OutVariable.
Standard Aliases for Get-ChildItem: dir, list, ls, gci
When listing files and sub-directories, get-childitem will return the mode (attributes), last write time, file size (length), and the filename.
Valid modes (attributes) are: d (directory), a (archive), r (read-only), h (hidden), and s (system).
The default path is the current directory ‘ . ‘
To specify all the items in the current directory use ‘*’
Wildcards
When listing a single folder (without recursion), you can do get-childitem c:\music\*.mp3
Unlike the CMD shell, in PowerShell the path filter of c:\music\*.mp3 is applied only to files not folders (or other containers)
The way to apply a wildcard recursively to a whole tree of items in PowerShell is to use the -include parameter:
get-childitem c:\music\ -include *.mp3 -recurse
This change in syntax was required because some providers (such as the registry provider) allow backslashes in a value name, separating the -path from the -include string makes it possible to use get-childitem against any provider: files, registry, processes etc.