Trash takes to long to empty

Since I installed Snow Leopard, emptying the trash takes forever.  Does anyone know if this is normal?  No matter if it's 1 file or 800.  It takes sometimes hours.
Please gives us your thoughts.
Thanks

From the Finder menu bar, select Finder ▹ Preferences ▹ Advanced and uncheck the box labeled Empty Trash securely.

Similar Messages

  • Why does trash take so long to empty?

    I had some stuff in my trash to empty today. About 2 gigs. It's been emptying for over 2 hours!? What's going on with Leopard? I have had this before. I am not trying the secure empty feature. Thanks
    Cheers
    Mike

    if some stuff takes so long to empty here is a small trick. collect all the items in a folder that you want to trash on your desktop. open terminal application in utilities folder. type
    cd Desktop
    for changing directory to your Desktop. then type the following without brackets.
    rm -rf (name of the folder)
    the folder will be deleted immedeately.

  • My trash takes too long or doesn't empty at all.

    I've tried the terminal option. I have trash preferences set to Secure Empty Trash everytime I empty the trash.
    I updated to Mountain Lion two weeks ago, and I've been having trouble with my trash quickly emptying like it used to.
    SHORT VERISON: I'm deleted shows, movies, documents, and photos (over 5,000) from my external 1TB drive. The progress bar moves slowly or not at all (I keep force quitting because it takes over three hours to delete a few files).
    LONG VERSION: I have no backup of my laptop. Time Machine used to backup my laptop to this external, but it stopped deleting older version, so I had to manually delete the oldest version tonight (the only version for some reason, it doesn't show any others) to get it to try and back up, but then it said it was going to take 11 DAYS to do the backup, and I'm pretty sure I don't have enough room anyway, I even tried excluding huge files that I would be fine with losing.
    So I decided to go through and delete a bunch of things on external to free up space, (and trust me, it will free up A TON of space... if they ever delete), but (and I've been experimenting) Finder can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to delete a single half hour episode, to never deleteing it at all.
    I also can't move things to my laptop because I'm trying to free up space there too. I got a video camera and didn't realize that I'd downloaded over 110gigs of videos from my new camera. So I have no room on my laptop, but that won't delete it from the external anyway, it'll copy it I think.
    I need to get this multitude of large and small files off my external before I can backup my laptop. But.... I can't do it! I have no idea what's wrong! It's driving me crazy. Normally some extreme form of emptying the trash worked in the past, but not now... nothing is speeding this up, or working at all.

    I got to the Trash It! Link and tried that. It worked! I still don't know why Finder was acting up like that. But I'm glad to have all of this space (I also thought I would let Time Machine run for a bit while trying to figure this out, and it was up the 42 days as the estimated time).
    THANK YOU! Thank you so much! I'm bookmarking that link for future reference.

  • Why does secure empty the trash take so long to perform?

    When I empty the 'secure trash' folder, it takes hours to perform what use to take seconds or minutes to do.

    Try deleting less at one time.
    Unless you're trying to get rid of malware/dodgy software, there's not really much point in using 'secure empty trash' if what you're worried about is someone recovering your deleted files. Experts can still recover stuff even after that.
    The only way to get rid of your data securely is to overwrite the entire disk several times with zeros (Disk Utility has a function for this, and it will take a long time.).
    And if its really confidential, put the disk in an incinerator or a blender , the only 100% surefire method.

  • Empty trash takes a long time!!

    I've got a 18.86GB trash and I can't empty it!!!
    I left it there for a long while and It still doesn't empty!!
    Is there any way to force empty the trash without damaging my system/Hard-drive? (I tried Secure empty trash... Same result)
    I downloaded Force Empty Trash from Macmaps.com, will it damage my system/Hard-drive?
    looking for answers from a master!!!

    I do hope that you haven't put sleepimage there !!
    The trash is actually a directory (.Trash) in your home directory.
    Open Terminal and enter:
    $ cd .Trash
    $ ls -lase (This will then list the contents of Trash).
    You can then delete files directly from Trash using:
    $ rm <filename>
    For more information on the usage of "rm", type:
    $ man rm
    Note that this command is very powerful and should not be used in the wrong place, or with the wrong wildcards!
    Cheers,
    Rodney

  • Why does SECURE EMPTY TRASH take so long (several days)?

    I am using OS 10.3.9. I didn't empty the trash for quite a while, and several days ago clicked SECURE EMPTY TRASH. The emptying process began but has not finished even now! Does it take THAT much longer when one uses SECURE EMPTY TRASH? I see that the little message window for Trash says:
    Item to delete: 114,158 This number hasn't gone down now for several minutes.
    Several times I have stopped the Empty Trash process to shut the computer down or just because I wanted to stop it, but it seem to me that after "Emptying the Trash" has been going on for so long, it ought to be finished by now. I welcome any sunlight you can shed on this. Thank you.
    — Lorna in Southern California

    When you choose to Secure Empty Trash, the system
    must overwrite the area where those items area a
    minimum of 7 times for it to be considered secure.
    When you have that many files in the Trash, this can
    take quite some time.
    So, unless you have something that is confidential in
    the Trash, your best option is to Empty Trash
    normally.
    Mulder
    If my answer helped solve your problem, please
    consider awarding some points. Why
    Reward Points?
    OK, and thank you. You have answered my question; I now won't be worrying that something is awfy. The Secure Empty Trash is still emptying and it is down to about 77,000 items. I have clicked the YES, MY QUESTION HAS BEEN ANSWERED button and I appreciate your reassurance.
    — Lorna in Southern California

  • Why does it take so long to empty my trash?

    Deleting files and removing applications is taking way too long. Why is this?

    HI,
    Make sure you have enough free disk space. Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you always have a minimum of 10% to 15% free disk space at all times.
    And go here for help with stubborn Trash.
    http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html
    Carolyn

  • Why is Aperture trash taking so long to empty?

    I emptied the Aperture trash, and am now trying to empty my desktop trash (Finder > Emty Trash) but it is taking sooooo long. I have almost 5,000 items to delete, and the progress bar is moving very slowly. Is this normal?

    I did select 'secure' empty.
    Ok that explains it, selecting this adds a lot of time to the emptying,
    A normal emptying of the trash is really a bookkeeping operation., The Operating System only marks the disk space where those files are as available to be used again but doesn't actually write over the data so this goes pretty quick.
    With a secure erase the area on the disk where the data  is stored is written over. This adds a lot of time to the operation.
    So sit back you might be waiting for a bit
    regards

  • Why is the trash taking so long to empty?

    I recently migated my music files to iCloud through Match tumes and have put my music lrary folder in the Trash.  I then emptied the trash and there were almost 10k files to delete.  The  first 9,000 or so went fairly nornal as afar as delete speed, but starting at file 1028, it's now taking up to an hour per file deleted.
    I've tried a bunch of things including a PRAM reboot, but no luck so far.  The files were on my external fire-wire drive.   suggestions?  Thanks!

    Select  ▹ Force Quit... from the menu bar, then select Finder and press return. From the Finder menu bar, select Finder ▹ Preferences ▹ Advanced and uncheck the box labeled Empty Trash securely. Try again to empty the Trash. If you still have problems, follow the instructions in this support article:
    You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

  • Emptying trash takes long

    I mean forever. I once wanted to remove one backup from the Time Machine drive, but when it counted about 800 000 files to be removed and started counting them down very slowly (I have a fast drive), I force killed the Locum process responsible for trash emptying and removed the files from the terminal (rm -rf). Of course it took much less time. Then I wanted to empty the rest of the trash, but this takes very long ever since. It always has say 10 files to remove and keeps removing them one after one for about a minute (insanely slow). Today I wanted to erase about 400 files (about 8GB) from my class 6 SD card and it took about two hours till I lost my patience, stopped the emptying (clicking the stop button now) and formatted the card in my camera. I wonder if it is the rm-rf procedure Mac Leopard doesn't like or what? If you look at my specs you will notice a good CPU and a fast disk too, that's just insane, It has never happened before till I did rm -rf the first time. And of course the Locum process takes a LOT of CPU performance while erasing the files. please give a suggestion what to do. thanks

    1) it didn't take forever with rm -rf which is good to know in some cases
    2) now everything takes forever. Okay not forever but for example I just removed a small app and trash emptying took loooong again, about a minute instead of a split of second, it has never happened to me before on a slower mac, I guess something is wrong. the Locum process - whatever it means - ate up about 130% of CPU (a whole core + 30% of the other one). I will try to reboot and inform.
    edit: ah i looked the word up, no i'm not talking about a locum tenens, it is the actual name of the process which cares for file moving and trash emptying. FYI /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Resources/Locum
    ohhhh you should see it counting down one after one, I tried to remove VLC player (mine 128MB), it the trash emptying window shows over 1200 files to be removed and counting down slowly at about 3files/second rate. weird. rebooting now.
    Message was edited by: cukerko

  • Why does emptying the garbage take so long now? It has greatly slowed down my workflow.

    Before Mountain Lion and maybe even Lion came out emptying the trash was instantaneous... What the **** happened. Now if my hardrive gets full and I have a **** load of stuff to remove it takes HOURS to do so. This is ridiculous, why does it take so long to delete something?

    Have you checked the option to Empty the Trash Securely? That will slow it down significantly.

  • Emptying Trash takes ages ... :(

    Hello,
    I find recently that emptying my system trash takes a really long time ... Before, it used to be very quick with a noise of scrumpling up paper, now it just hangs and countsdown the item to be deleted super slow. I just upgraded to Lion but before was having the same issue with Snow Leopard.
    I have installed Trashit - which works fine - but I don't see why I should have to use a 3rd party app to sort out my problem and I would prefer to just drag to the icon as I'm meant to.
    Any ideas?
    Thank you -
    M

    Thanks for your response, AnaMusic - much appreciated I shouldn't have been so quick off the mark to post - I found the response here about 4 seconds later with exactly the same title and tags... doh !

  • Secure Empty Trash - takes forever with SSD

    I've installed 2 x 256 GB Samsung SSDs that I am now thinking of using as my bootdrive. But as I was playing around with them, I noticed that they turn into the slowest turtles when secure emptying the trash. Having done some investigating, one issue appears to be OS X's habit of zeroing the respective areas 7 times to meet the DoD standards. (I believe that is not the only issue though as secure emptying also takes much longer in my RAID 0 HD setup than it should for just writing that amount of data 7 times).
    I couldn't find any clues on how to change this behaviour of overwriting 7 times. As a recent study suggests that most data is gone for good after a single overwrite on both, HDs and SSDs, I reckon that is good enough for me. Any ideas on how to change that behaviour? (I am aware of the regular emptying trash, what I want is a 'secure empty' with a single overwrite).

    Thank you - that's very helpful.
    I guess this response also implies there is no way to change the default behaviour of the GUI?

  • My folders take forever to open and then the docs within take a long time for the icon to pop up. the same thing with moving itmes from the desktop to a folder, and also emptying the trashh

    my folders take forever to open and then the docs within take a long time for the icon to pop up. the same thing with moving itmes from the desktop to a folder, and also emptying the trashh

    Don't know if that would be a failing hard drive, but it may be that you are out of available space. How much hard drive space do you have available? Please highlight the Macintosh HD icon and then press Command and I for a get info window. Once open, please copy and post the following:
    Capacity:
    Used:
    Available:
    Mac OS requires a minimum of 10 - 15% of total hard drive space available and empty at all times in order to operate properly.

  • Sometimes my computer takes too long to connect to new website. I am running a pretty powerful work program at same time, what is the best solution? Upgrading speed from cable network, is it a hard drive issue? do I need to "clean out" the computer?

    Many times my computer takes too long to connect to new website. I have wireless internet (time capsule) and I am running a pretty powerful real time financial work program at same time, what is the best solution? Upgrading speed from cable network? is it a hard drive issue? do I only need to "clean out" the computer? Or all of the above...not to computer saavy.  It is a Macbook Pro  osx 10.6.8 (late 2010).

    Almost certainly none of the above!  Try each of the following in this order:
    Select 'Reset Safari' from the Safari menu.
    Close down Safari;  move <home>/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Cache.db to the trash; restart Safari.
    Change the DNS servers in your network settings to use the OpenDNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
    Turn off DNS pre-fetching by entering the following command in Terminal and restarting Safari:
              defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled -boolean false

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