In modern versions of Windows, when a file is deleted, it is sent to the Recycle Bin first. Under the hood this constitutes the creation of two unique files prepended by $I
and $R
and appended with the original file's extension such as:
$RMYY8AS.txt
$IMYY8AS.txt
The $I
file contains information about the deleted file. The $R
file contains the full contents of that deleted file.
- Account - Security Identifier (SID)
- File - Deletion
- File - Size
- File - Path
- Windows 11
- Windows 10
- Windows 8
- Windows 7
- Windows Vista
C:\$Recycle.Bin\{USER_SID}
- KAPE (Extraction and Parsing)
- RBCmd
The presence of this artifact indicates that a file was deleted and sent to the recycle bin.
The user who deleted the file will have their SID shown as the parent directory for the $I
and $R
files, for example:
C:\$Recycle.Bin\S-1-5-21-3471133136-2963561160-3931775028-1000\$RMYY8AS.txt
C:\$Recycle.Bin\S-1-5-21-3471133136-2963561160-3931775028-1000\$IMYY8AS.txt
In this case, S-1-5-21-3471133136-2963561160-3931775028-1000
is the User SID.
The $R
file contains the full contents of the original deleted file.
The $I
file contains the following data:
- Size of the original file
- Full path of the original file
- Deletion time and date
This example was produced on Windows 10, Version 10.0.19044 Build 19044