Mount the drive under a Linux disk like Clonezilla and make a sector-by-sector copy. That way you have a copy to mess with and not the original. I don't think you can stop the default Windows process of creating a hidden Recycle Bin folder in each drive, but many Linux systems (like Puppy Linux) will not touch the drive with a write operation until you tell them to.
EDIT: My bad I was responding to a different post. However, if you boot your Windows machine with a Puppy Linux disk, THEN insert your external drive, you can delete the recycler and move your mp3s to your drive without getting any unwanted files written to the drive. Then you can remove your mp3 drive, remove the Puppy disk, and reboot to Windows without too much hassle. I don't know of any actual way to stop the hidden recycler file from being thrown on the drive, but this would work around it.
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I agree that the Recycle Bin being forced on every mounted fixed volume without the option to disable it is bad and poor design. I just (not for the first time) ran into a situation where it is *horrible* because it causes problems with data-recovery. I lost a bunch of files on a volume, so I stopped using that drive to prevent anything being overwritten, yet stupid Windows went ahead and wrote stuff to the Recycle Bin files, thus overwriting a file, even though I did NOT modify any files on that volume!
– Synetech – 2012-10-28T20:49:08.2001
How do I get Windows 7 to NOT use the recycling Bin on a removable drive?
Define “removable”. Windows only creates a Recycle Bin on fixed (read internal) and external hard-drives. In both cases, including external drives, they are not considered removable drives. Windows only considers floppies, memory-cards, and flash-drives as “removable” and does not create or use a Recycle Bin on those. This question was presumably talking about an external hard-drive as opposed to a removable drive on which Windows does create a Recycle Bin. – Synetech – 2013-11-17T21:02:26.500