What does empty trash do?

As I am typing, my external disk is thrashing its way through removing far more than 1 million items. I put a few folders in the trash and emptied it. While this was going on, I went to the terminal and deleted a few other folders on another disk using rm. The method using rm resulted in the space being instantly freed. Empty trash just keeps going. I did not use secure empty trash. What is it doing besides deleting data? Why is emptying the trash so slow?
The disk is a firewire hard drive. I'm deleting an old Time Machine folder to make room for a Time Machine sparseimage when I connect this disk to the Airport Extreme.

What is it doing besides deleting data?
With a simple 'Empty Trash' no data at all is deleted. The 'trashed' items may be recovered by methods of data recovery. What is deleted is the record in the disk directory of where an item is to be found on the disk. The trashed items are at first all still there, but the drive has now marked their addresses as available, and so those 'trashed' files will gradually be overwritten by fresh items being saved to disk and by other disk activities.
The bottleneck, the reason for the slowness, is mainly due to the slowness of the Finder to do the necessary updating.

Similar Messages

  • Why does emptied trash still leave 400+ files?

    Why does my empty trash (all, including locked) still leave 400+  files in there untouched?  Even after multiple attempts?
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    Thanks.
    ~Norm

    Hi norman from akron,
    Sorry to hear you are having trouble emptying the contents of your trash.
    The article below may provide some troubleshooting steps for your issue.
    Always backup your computer via Time Machine before troubleshooting issues like this.
    You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash
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    - Judy

  • Why does empty trash automatically Secure Empty Trash?

    Hi
    Ive searched many forums but cant find an answer.
    Whenever I empty my trash (running latest Snow Leopard), it automatically secure empties it. I dont want this as it takes too long (I know its more secure etc) however I am time poor and really need to just empty trash normally!
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    Thanks

    Choose Preferences from the Finder menu, click on Advanced, and turn it off.
    (51488)

  • What exactly does "Secure Empty Trash" do?

    There's very little technical detail on the web about this. I'd like to understand exactly what secure empty trash does.
    What method does it use to overwrite?
    How does it deal with temp files?
    Why does it take so long?
    Why, when there's only one file in the trash, does it always claim it's erasing 9 files?
    What other files is it erasing in addition to the visible trash contents?
    Can it work across network connections and external drives?
    Has the method changed in Leopard?
    etc.. etc..
    Feel free to get all technical, if you know the answers!
    Thanks!

    What method does it use to overwrite?
    It writes over the files with 0's.
    How does it deal with temp files?
    Not sure what you mean. It treats any file in the trash the same. Could you elaborate?
    Why does it take so long?
    Because it has to first write over the item with 0's, then delete the item.
    Why, when there's only one file in the trash, does it always claim it's erasing 9 files?
    What other files is it erasing in addition to the visible trash contents?
    It's a bug.
    Can it work across network connections and external drives?
    Yes.
    Has the method changed in Leopard?
    Not that I know of.

  • I have OSX 10.6.8 and my new HP 6700 printer won't print until I "empty print file!" What does that command mean? How do I do it?

    I have OSX 10.6.8 and my new HP Officejet 6700 all-in-one printer won't print until I "empty print file!" What does "empty print file" mean. How do I do it?

    Go to System Preferences>Print & Fax>Open Print Queue, select(highlight) any jobs and delete them. Do this for all printers in the left side bar (select printer when you click  Open Print Queue)
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  • Empty trash needs password

    Why does empty trash need password?

    I have an iMac, with Lion, and suddenly, i have to put my password (just like when I install something new) when I put something (especially files that are on the desktop) in the trash
    I used the disk utility in order to repair the permissions and It has found lots of problems.
    But the problem was not resolved.
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  • About Secure Empty Trash

    A long time ago I had some files on my apple that I dident want anybody els to open. So then I put them into the trash. And then I clicked on Empty Trash. Well today I wanted to see what secure empty trash was. So then I clicked it and it said "are you sure you want to do this? You can never get these files back". So dose that mean that those files I only click on empty trash are still in my apple or somewhere? Please help! Thanks.

    Emptying the trash only removes the files from the directory list. It does not overwrite them so they can still exist on your HD until that particular area of the drive is overwritten by some other file save. Secure empty actually overwrites the files with zeros which obliterates them.

  • Time for Secure Empty Trash and Free Disk Space

    Hi Forum,
    Can anyone give me a guesstimate of how long secure empty trash would take or can take? I have 290 items and its been there for about an hour.
    Also, if I choose to free disk space, how long approximately would this take? Is it worth doing this? I have 40gb "free" now.
    Thanks.
    S

    it's not necessarily the number of files, but more the total size of all the files combined. But lets just say it dose take a while to do. you really only need to use secure empty trash on files of a sensitive nature. Such as financial information (credit card numbers, back information, social security numbers)
    Also by spending all that time writing to the hard drive, over and over. Witch is what secure empty trash dose. your reducing the life span of your hard drive. Like car tires your hard drive is only good for so many miles.
    I ones secure emptied trash on a GB worth of data. I remember it takings hours. I ones tried scrubbing a whole hard drive, after two days I stopped it because I didn't realize it was going to take so long. That being said it doesn't take too long to scrub a few files that are a few MB in size.

  • Securely emptying trash after having emptied trash (unsecurely)

    Hello. I've emptied my trash as I'm parting with my MacBook, but following this I realised that I should have securely emptied the trash. Now I want to restore the emptied trash for the purpose of securely emptying the trash, but it seems quite impossible. Is there an easy way to do this?
    I would wipe the mac but I don't have the OS CDs as they weren't sold with the Mac as everything was pre-installed.

    Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
    Confidential to Julian Assange and Ed Snowden: YOU guys need to do the 35 passes with random data.
    Faster and safer to replace the drive, that 35x takes weeks to complete and isn't available anymore only on Snow Leopard and for a time hard drives were small.
    Brian Manning started out with 35x, but it was taking so long he canceled and went with 0x and that's not strong enough as the government used magnetic techniques to read the deleted data.
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    However the problem with that is it only does what's in the Trash, not hidden files, caches etc., for a better method the entire drive or account should be scrubbed with free space 0x-7x.

  • I have 139 items in my Trash, When I click on secure empty trash to erase them it wants to erase 1309 items. Does anyone know what may be going on?

    I have 139 items in my Trash, When I click on secure empty trash to erase them it wants to erase 1309 items. Does anyone know what may be going on?

    If your erasing packages or programs, they appear like a file, but are actually folders with more files and folders inside.
    For instance right click on your Pictures/iPhoto Library and "show package contents" inside is more files and folders of files.

  • What does "error code -8003" mean? I get it when I try and empty my Trash.

    What does "error code -8003" mean? I get it when I try and empty my Trash.

    Thanks, I found the Trash it program sorted things. Download Trash It! for Mac

  • I'm trying to empty my trash on my mac but it won't because it's "UpdatingDockTail"  What does this mean?

    I'm trying to empty my Trash on my desk top but a window pops up saying "The operation can't be completed because the item "UpgradeDockTail" is in use.
    It then has stop or continue to choose from but nothing happens when I click on either one. What does this mean and how do I stop it?

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  • Yosemite is awful- unable to empty trash, volume options are haywire, error codes on file management, and files won't replace when moved. What are my options at this point?

    Like the topic - "Yosemite is awful- unable to empty trash, volume options are haywire, error codes on file management, and files won't replace when moved. What are my options at this point?"
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  • Emptying trash securely does not delete all files? Any ideas?

    When I try and empty trash (securely) it does not delete all files, so I am left with files in the Trash?  Any ideas?

    Select one of the items in the Trash and open the Info window. What does it show for Where?

  • I have a MacBookPro 2011. The Empty Trash command does not work. I mean I can not empty my trash

    I have a MacBookPro 2011. The Empty Trash command does not work. I mean I can not empty my trash. what should I do? since now there are more than 5000 items accumulated in my trash.

    Thanks everybody for your comments.
    I just found a way out from the disscussion : I can't use empty trash or secure empty trash.
    The same formula proposed by Zyriab solved my question.
    This solved my questionRe: I can't use empty trash or secure empty trash.

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