External drive and recycle bin.....what's happening?

Hi All,
Something odd that I can't get my head around.
When I looked in the "Recycle bin", it was completely empty.
I then connected my external drive ( drive i) and several files appeared in the recycle bin.
I restored one of the files, and it went into another drive (drive H)???

I was thinking that perhaps when I originally deleted these files, my external drive was "H" and not "i"
therefore restoring them put them back into "H"
Where are these files kept????

First off what are the files? The other is that they could be just leftovers from when the OS never deleted them the last time, or it was not properly ejected, so the files stay in the bin.

If you do not need them, just delete them and move on. No need to disect the process and play 20 guesses with yourself why they showed up when the OS saw that you plugged in the device. Weirder things have happened.

Thanks for the replies.
One of the files was an old Windows iso installation file which was quite large.
Just inserted the external drive again and emptied the Recycle bin and everything is fine.
Cheers!