Loosing and changed drive letters

Hello,
I hope someone can help. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate on 64 bit. I installed when the machine had one 500 GB Caviar Black SATA 3G Drive. It showed that it had made a partition for System Reserved and it was auto assigned a drive letter. I installed a 1TB Caviar Green as storage and backup. When formatted it also showed up with a System Reserved partition with the drive letter E: IIRC.
Now the Computer display shows the C: Drive, a System Reserve Drive as E: (displays 132MB free of 200 MB and the 2nd Drive: as F: with 777 GB of 931 GB. Newbie on newer system reminds that this is the 1 TB WD Caviar Green SATA 3G Drive.
If I am correct the E: System Reserve is the W7 assigned area on the partition on the C: Drive. The System Reserved area on the F: (2nd Drive) has disappeared.
But when I do a backup it shows the C: Drive, the E: Partition as System Reserve, the F: Drive and a System Reserve area with NO Drive letter.
Coincidentally for some reason deletions on either drive seem to end up in the F: Drive $Recycle Bin.
Can anyone explain this as I did not do it, and if the my system has a problem??
Any assistance is appreciated, thanks.
glennc

Well as for the $recycle.bin, it is actually just a list of pointers to sectors on the HD and is maintained on BOTH HDs; nothing is actually moved to the F: drive when you delete (and even if it happened to have been on F: it still never moved). This is a system file and you really shouldn't be in it. If you want to access the recycle bin use the one without the "$" and the ".". Really you should not even see the $recycle.bin version; if you go into Windows explorer - Organize - "Folder and Search Options" - "View" Tab - check "Hide protected operating system files" then you will no longer see $recycle.bin. Then still in "Folder and Search Options", go to "General" Tab and check "Show all folders" (if it isn't checked already) and this will show the real Recycle Bin you should be using.

If you want to see exactly what drives and partitions are set up go to the start menu search and type in "diskmgmt.msc" (without quotes) & select it to run.

Hello TrainableMan,
Thanks for your explanation and advice. With previous OS I always had everything unhidden but never looked closely. Windows 7 has me behind the curve so I have already taken your advice.
Appreciate it.
glennc