While performing end-of-year clean up on lab infrastructure, I discovered my 8 disk Synology array with about 22TB of usable storage was almost out of space. Really? What had I filled all that space with?
After a lot of digging around, I found that I had enabled the Recycle Bin on one or more Shared Folders, but had NOT created a Recycle Bin emptying schedule.
This means that over several years of shoving lots of data through the array, the various Recycle Bins attached to various Shared Folders had loaded up with cruft. I figured this out running a Storage Analyzer report.
To get my space back, the solution was to empty the Recycle Bin. One way to do that is to edit the properties of a Shared Folder and click “Empty Recycle Bin”. You’ll get a sense of relief as Storage Manager shows available space growing as the Synology removes however many million files you’ve been composting for however long.
However, I like to solve problems permanently. No one has time to manually empty recycle bins on a disk array in a distant rack. Manually. Like a savage. Yuck.
Automating a recycle bin task on a Synology box is done via the Task Scheduler found in the Control Panel. Simply create a “Recycle Bin” Scheduled Task.
The configuration of the task from there is straightforward. Give the task a useful name, set the schedule, and then the policy. There’s plenty of power and granularity in the Task Settings–look at the screenshot below. The appropriate policy will vary by personal and/or business requirements, so I won’t bother talking you through all of that. It depends!™ 😆
