Working with Trash Contents

The Trash icon represents a special directory used to temporarily hold items you have deleted using the file manager. This directory gives your files a second chanceallowing you to be certain that you no longer want to access or edit a deleted item before it is finally removed entirely from your system. After you send an item to the Trash, you can do two things with it: You can restore the item to its original location, or you can permanently delete it. The following sections describe these operations in detail.

Restoring Files That Have Been Thrown Away

If you decide you want to save an item that you've previously sent to the Trash, you can restore it to the desktop or a directory. To do this, double-click the Trash icon to open a new file manager window listing the Trash contents, as shown in Figure 5.19. Then drag and drop or cut/copy and paste files from the Trash to other storage areas such as your home directory.

Figure 5.19. Double-click the desktop Trash icon to open a file manager window listing its contents. To restore a file or directory from the Trash, drag and drop or cut/copy and paste items to the location where you want to preserve them.

Emptying the Trash

If you know you don't want to save any of the files and directories you've thrown in the Trash, you can permanently delete them from the Trash folder. Emptying the Trash folder removes the deleted items from your hard drive forever. To empty the Trash, follow these steps:

1.	Right-click the Trash icon on the desktop to produce the context menu.
2.	Choose Empty Trash. A dialog box appears, asking you to confirm that you want to empty the Trash.
3.	Select the Empty option to permanently delete all items currently in the Trash folder or select Cancel to abort the operation.

Empty the Trash Only If You're Serious!

When you empty the Trash, any files or folders it contains are erased forever and cannot be recovered.