SmiKar Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture
Practical retention that reduces SharePoint costs
Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture gives organisations a controlled, compliant, and far more economical way to preserve deleted SharePoint content without relying on the costly and opaque Preservation Hold Library, known as the PHL.
Instead of allowing deleted files to remain hidden inside SharePoint under retention policies, Squirrel automatically captures them from the SharePoint recycle bin and archives them to secure, low cost Azure Blob storage. This delivers predictable storage costs, clearer governance, and simple recovery, all while maintaining compliance.
Squirrel is designed for large enterprise tenants that need scale, reliability, and operational simplicity.
Core benefits
Keep your data compliance without the huge SharePoint costs of Preservation Hold Libraries
Lower Microsoft 365 storage costs
Deleted content is moved out of SharePoint into low cost Blob storage, reducing pressure on tenant limits and ongoing spend.
Reduced reliance on the PHL
By capturing deleted items externally, you avoid the silent storage growth created by the Preservation Hold Library.
Simple recovery
Deleted files remain discoverable through a dedicated SharePoint site with stubs that link back to the archived content.
Transparent governance
Unlike the hidden PHL, preserved items are visible, searchable, and auditable within SharePoint.
Configurable timing
You control how long items stay in the SharePoint recycle bin before being archived, for example seven days or longer if required.
Built for enterprise scale
Squirrel is designed to operate across large tenants with thousands of sites, libraries, and users.
What Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture does
Squirrel continuously monitors the SharePoint recycle bin across your entire tenant.
After a configurable period, typically around seven days, deleted files are automatically archived to Azure Blob storage rather than being preserved inside expensive SharePoint storage.
To keep recovery straightforward, Squirrel creates a dedicated SharePoint site, commonly named Recycle Bin Capture. For every deleted file, Squirrel places a lightweight stub in this site. Authorised users can search, locate, and restore content directly from SharePoint using familiar tools.
This approach preserves your compliance position while materially reducing your Microsoft 365 storage footprint.
Why enterprises choose this approach
Many organisations are legally required to retain all documents for long periods. Traditionally, this forces them to keep everything inside SharePoint, which is one of the most expensive storage platforms in Microsoft 365.
Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture allows you to meet the same retention requirements while moving preserved content to far cheaper storage. SharePoint remains your collaboration platform, not your long term archive.
At the same time, IT and records teams retain a clear, visible way to retrieve deleted content without complex eDiscovery workflows or specialist tools.
How this fits with your retention strategy
Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture does not replace formal records management where it is legally required. Instead, it complements your existing policies by reducing storage costs where long retention is mandated and separating active collaboration from long term preservation.
For highly regulated environments that must still use Microsoft retention policies, Squirrel can still reduce pressure on live SharePoint storage by archiving inactive content in a structured way.
Who this is for
- Large enterprises facing rising Microsoft 365 storage costs.
- Tenants with long retention requirements.
- Organisations running major SharePoint cleanup or migration programs.
- IT teams seeking clearer governance over deleted content.
- Compliance teams that need retention without excessive cloud spend.
Cut SharePoint storage costs without losing compliance
Squirrel Recycle Bin Capture archives deleted content to low-cost Blob storage, reducing reliance on the Preservation Hold Library (PHL) while keeping records visible and recoverable in SharePoint.
Bring visibility to deleted content retention
Instead of letting the hidden Preservation Hold Library (PHL) inflate storage, Squirrel captures recycle bin items, preserves them externally, and restores them through simple SharePoint stubs.