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Emptying trash, negative number left?? HELP

C

Capex

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 31, 2010
112
0
Canada
I just upgraded my hard drive, used time machine to bring stuff back over, and I was left with a ton of stuff in my trash. When I try to empty it, this is what it ends up going to:

Help!

I've searched for a few things but i haven't turned up results. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough, sorry. But ahhhh

EDIT: I got it to stop doing that, but there are still items in the trash that just refuse to delete. They are old backups, if that helps.

EDIT 2: The items only show up in the trash if I have my Time Machine Disk plugged in.
 

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F

fmezler

macrumors newbie
Feb 6, 2012
1
0
Negative Items to Delete

I don't know if this will work for you, but it fixed it for me.

I disconnected my external USB drive from my Mac and plugged into my MacBook Air - yea, unfortunately you are going to need a different Mac. Then I opened the Finder on my external drive. On my MacBook Air I had to turn on the hidden files by going into Terminal and typing the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

then enter the command

killall Finder

That showed the hidden files on my external drive. I selected Get Info on the .Trash and changed the permissions to Read and Write for me. Then I renamed it .Trashed. Ejected it from my MacBook Air and plugged it back into my Mac. That was it - the trash on my Mac was empty!

To get the hidden files so they don't show again, just enter the same command, but change true to false.

Someone may say that the files never deleted off the drive or whatever, but I could care less - it was the trash on the Mac I need emptied - not the external drive.
 
C

Capex

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 31, 2010
112
0
Canada
fmezler said:
I don't know if this will work for you, but it fixed it for me.

I disconnected my external USB drive from my Mac and plugged into my MacBook Air - yea, unfortunately you are going to need a different Mac. Then I opened the Finder on my external drive. On my MacBook Air I had to turn on the hidden files by going into Terminal and typing the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

then enter the command

killall Finder

That showed the hidden files on my external drive. I selected Get Info on the .Trash and changed the permissions to Read and Write for me. Then I renamed it .Trashed. Ejected it from my MacBook Air and plugged it back into my Mac. That was it - the trash on my Mac was empty!

To get the hidden files so they don't show again, just enter the same command, but change true to false.

Someone may say that the files never deleted off the drive or whatever, but I could care less - it was the trash on the Mac I need emptied - not the external drive.
Click to expand...

Haha the problem seemed to sort itself out. Thanks for this generous reply. I forgot this happened. Have a good evening
 
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