What is this and how do I clean it up? (Hidden recycle bin?)

Hey all….
Just did a fresh intall of Vista Home Prem. and reinstalled all of my programs.After doing so I ran some basic disk clean up utilities and had just under 14 gigs of used space on my drive.
I have not installed anything else since but have downloaded some movies and music then either moved them to an external drive or deleted them. After running another disk cleanup it shows that I am up to 29 gigs of used space. Which to me seems unlikely since I did not install anything and I keep nothing on my primary drive – it is all stored on an external.
After running a spyware program I saw it scanning files that I knew I had deleted….the files were in the $recycle.bin whatever that is.
My actuall recycle bin is emty all the time, but as far as I can tell, Vista has this area that it keeps previously deleted files, it took my spyware scanner forever to scan this area and I was quite suprised to see it scanning items I thought I had deleted.
Google does not recognize the “$” when searching and I have had no luck in finding much out about this thing. I have reduced the amount of space allocated for my recycle bin but it seems to have not had any change.
What is this “$recycle.bin” and how do I clean it up?
Answer #1
. The files are still there, but without the flags as markers the computer cannot find them. The only way to really get rid of a file is to re-write over it and obliterate the data.
The recycle bin is really another folder where all your 'deleted' files are stored in case you ever have a change of mind and want to restore them. When you empty the recycle bin, you "delete" them, but this only knocks the file markers down, it does not erase the data.
Immediately after you delete a file it is still on the drive, the computer just cannot see it any more and the space is freed up so the computer can re-write over it.
Answer #2
you try turning off the recycle bin completely Just did a fresh intall of Vista Home Prem.
you do a full format, wipe the drive before you installed ?
try googling “weird vista recycle bin” instead of using the $
Answer #3
What is this "$recycle.bin" and how do I clean it up?
btw $recycle.bn shows up in my sys too, when kaspersky scan is on
Answer #4
you try turning off the recycle bin completely Just did a fresh intall of Vista Home Prem.
you do a full format, wipe the drive before you installed ?
try googling "weird vista recycle bin" instead of using the $
Complete format and clean install.