(Modified 2011 Mar 26)
Creating a trash bin
I often install a second hard drive and change the first drive to data drive. In Ubuntu, that rededicated hard drive didn't allow transfer of files to the trash bin. So, I had to delete files without the safety net of a trash bin.
To enable a trash bin, I had to do the following (courtesy of Ubuntu Forums):
figure out your UID (user id number)
if you're not sure, type: id
if you're the primary user, this number is likely to be 1000
in the data drive's root directory, create a .Trash-UID directory, e.g.:
sudo mkdir .Trash-1000
change the ownership of this new directory over to yourself, e.g.:
sudo chown -Rv .Trash-1000
where the -R flag is "recursive" and the v is for "verbose"
Some other considerations:
If you have multiple users, I don't know if you need to create a .Trash for each.
While searching for solutions, I saw a few posts recommending editing of /etc/fstab . I didn't need to do this, but your mileage may vary. A thread describing this process can be found at Ubuntu Forums.
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