Not 99%. Windows has many usability issues. I’d vote for “dont steal focus and stick windows in front of where I’m typing” and “don’t move things just as I go to click on them” for a start, and also “don’t somehow take an hour to delete 50 files.”

Shift-Del to delete files is usually much faster, though obviously this skips the recycle bin.

Moving files to the recycle bin and deleting files should take the same amount of time, both are essentially just a rewrite of the pointer to the data and don’t copy any data at all.

Not on Windows, it actually moves your files to a special directory.

I take it you don’t filesystem much do you?

Moving a file is literally just changing a pointer in the filesystem table to basically say ‘hey, these file contents are now stored in this other folder’. Moving a file on the same drive literally never requires rewriting the actual file contents.

I’m practically certain that what’s slowing Windows down when sending something to the Recycle Bin is the background processing and data compression being performed by System Restore.

I take it you don’t filesystem much do you?

I take it you don’t Windows much?

Windows moves the file from its current folder to the hidden system folder C:$Recycle.Bin. That involves copying file metadata, updating NTFS records, and possibly moving the file across volumes (which becomes a full file copy+delete).

Large files or folders with many entries take longer because NTFS has to record each move, update security descriptors, and maintain the Recycle Bin’s index.

If the file is on another drive than the C-drive, the system literally copies it into that drive’s recycle bin folder, then deletes the original.

Nobody said Windows did this stuff efficiently.

I’m practically certain that what’s slowing Windows down when sending something to the Recycle Bin is the background processing and data compression being performed by System Restore.

Windows doesn’t do any recycle bin data compression. And System Restore is a completely separate, unrelated system. So no it doesn’t do any of that.

I didn’t say the Recycle Bin does any data compression, I said System Restore does data compression, and this is indeed a known fact.

Sure, but neither is relevant to the recycle bin.

Windows has some other features hiding behind the scenes and bogging the system down when files get changed, like Restore Previous Versions…

…microsoft.com/…/backup-and-restore-with-file-his…

I do believe that feature is closely tied with System Restore as well…

What? File History is a completely different system. System Restore makes occasional restoration points and is enabled by default, File History needs to be set up to use it. It’s disabled by default and Microsoft seems to be actively trying to hide it (try finding it in the Win11 settings screen; you won’t find it there) so people use OneDrive to back their stuff up instead.