can't empty trash

[cicada]

There are mysterious files appear on my trash and I can't empty the trash, but when I say get info for these files they disappears and appear sometime later. What are these files? Please help. Thanks in advance.

[Gregg2]

Are you using Snow Leopard?

Someone will be along to answer this again. It's been asked multiple times here. I'm still using Leopard, so don't want to give the answer from memory and get the terms wrong. You could search for it if no one else responds.

[stridemat]

If you empty the trash while holding down the alt key it will force empty them. Make sure that you do not need the files!

[GS Owner]

I asked that very same Question a few months ago!

I was given a line of Unix to type. I used it last night. It was an unmitigated disaster!

I had a months worth of old Time Machine backups that I wanted to retire. I'm talking about about a half million worth of old files. All but the last 10,000 or so were eventually deleted. But it wouldn't delete! So I used the "sudo" command several months ago.

It deleted the current files , the latest copies the current work files., backup files on 2 different flash drives and messed up the rest of the Time Machine backups. It also messed up the System Files in the Internal Startup Drive so badly I had to reinstall Snow Leopard.

After the reinstall I instantly copied the deleted files from undisturbed Flash Drives that weren't touched. (I always have 4 Flash Drives plugged in a Hub; 2 Data Drives, backed up daily but not just yet ; 2 Drives that contain what best be called "Etc", "Everything Else" files. Backed up irregularly.)

I did what I've done before. I changed my Startup Disk to an External Drive and rebooted Leopard 10.5. Emptied Trash - 250,000+ files - and switch back to Snow Leopard.

I spent the rest of the night repairing the worst of the damaged files.
I'll be working the rest of today bringing the nuked files back up to speed.

REALLY needs to work on making deleting large amounts of obsolete files easier.

[Gregg2]

Originally Posted by stridemat

If you empty the trash while holding down the alt key it will force empty them.

Depends on the OS. It's Secure Empty Trash, or something like that, in SL, and I think it should be unchecked. But, look for that from someone who actually has SL!

Originally Posted by GS Owner

I was given a line of Unix to type. I used it last night. It was an unmitigated disaster!

My posture is reinforced: stay away from anything called Terminal.

[GS Owner]

Originally Posted by Gregg2

Depends on the OS. It's Secure Empty Trash, or something like that, in SL, and I think it should be unchecked. But, look for that from someone who actually has SL!


My posture is reinforced: stay away from anything called Terminal.

I just finished bringing everything back up to date.
*whew*

The next time I'm deleting a months worth of obsolete Time Machine backups - around December - I'm going back to Leopard 1.5 in the External Drive.

SL takes a long time deleting Trash. I started Deleting on the 16th. And it didn't finish - almost - until the other night. It was interesting watching on the Activity Monitor the progress of deleted files. At the start about 1 file a second would be Deleted: 250,454...250,453....250,452....etc. When it finally got around 50,000 or so you could see it delete 2 or 3 files at a time....48,456...48,454...48,452....48,399....48,398....etc.

Every few hours I had to stop the deletion because I had Other files that needed to be junked. Watching CPU Activity hit 100% usage just because I wanted to deletion stopped was "interesting." OK, here are more files to be junked...OK...back to deleting... 75,843...75,842...75,840...74,837....