Empty trash of external drive?

[gradi]

I have multiple external drives (SSD and HDD) that I have over time connected to various Macs. Naturally, from time to time I have deleted files and folders on them.

I am confused about something though concerning deleting stuff on an external drive. When I delete files/folders on my internal drive it goes to the Trash and does not actually delete and free up space on the internal drive until I either empty the Trash or go into Trash and select items to Delete Immediately. But how about external drives? When I delete something from an external drive does it really free up the space or is it retained like on internal drives? How do I free up the space on an external drive?

I know how to do this with Windows (I use both Macs and PCs). On Windows you just run the Disk Cleanup program and then select the external drive you want to clean up. It will permanently delete stuff and free up space that had earlier been deleted, i.e., it empties the external drive's trash. I suppose there is something like this for Mac, but I cannot find it.

 

[galad]

Each disk has got an hidden ".Trash" folder, where files are moved. So until you empty the trash or manually select "delete immediately" they are not deleted.

 

[gradi]

I am still a bit confused. Are you saying I need to connect each external drive and then somehow select the hidden .Trash folder on each one and empty it? How do I do this?

 

[galad]

The Finder will show the content of each .Trash folder in the Trash window that can be opened from the Dock. So you can either empty the aggregated Trash folder that Finder shows, or right click on a single file and select "Delete immediately".

If you don't empty or manually delete things in the trash, those file will live on in the ".Trash" folder on the disk they were from. A file on a disk called "SSD" moved to Trash is moved to "SSD/.Trash" for example.

So yes, if you want to free space, you have to empty the Trash or manually select "Delete immediately" on the individual files already in trash you want to delete.

 

[gradi]

I am sorry, but I am still confused. I opened up Trash from the Dock and have a Finder window open that shows the contents of Trash. At the moment one of my external SSDs is attached. I do not see a folder called .Trash in Finder that is looking at Trash. I also cannot find a .Trash folder on the external drive.

I think what you are saying is that all deleted files/folders from the internal drive and all external drives are put in the single Trash folder. Over the last few years I have used several external SSDs and HDDs on multiple Macs. Two of those Macs are long gone. If I deleted files from an external drive on an earlier Mac will those old deleted files be in the Trash folder of my current Mac?

In Trash is there some indication which files were deleted from which external drive and which ones are from the internal drive?

If I empty the Trash folder and then attach a different external drive which earlier I had deleted stuff from (some of which was on a different Mac) will all the space get freed up now automatically?

This is all very confusing. On Windows it is not confusing at all and very easy to manage.

How do I see what is in the .Trash folders for each external drive? So far, I cannot find any .Trash folders anywhere.

 

[DeltaMac]

There used to be a .trash folder, invisible because of the (dot)/period beginning that folder name.
But, I don't see it, despite turning visibility off. There must be some other linkup for the trash in the Finder, but there's apparently no folder called .trash, other than the trash itself.

But, each volume has its own trash. If you delete a file or folder--it goes in the trash. It will remain in the trash until you empty the trash. If you drag something into the trash on an external drive, that item will be visible in the trash, along with any items in the trash on any other volume that you have mounted on your Mac. If you eject the external drive, and have not emptied the trash, that item/items will still be in the trash, on that drive. You can empty the trash on that drive after mounting that external drive, and choosing to empty the trash.

That's pretty much how it works.

 

[iStorm]

Each disk has a hidden ".Trash" folder (it's actually ".Trashes" for external drives). It's a hidden system folder, so it does not show up in Finder even when you show hidden files/folders. You can basically ignore this part...just know that there's hidden folder on the drive that deleted items get sent to. (It's essentially the same as how Windows sends deleted items to a hidden "$RECYCLE.BIN" folder on the drive.)

The Trash icon in the Dock shows you ALL deleted items from the current logged in user, and ALL deleted items from ALL connected drives. For example, if you deleted "picture.jpg" from your external drive, it will show up as "picture.jpg" in Trash when the drive is connected/reconnected and disappear from Trash when the drive is disconnected. (The Recycle Bin in Windows behaves the same way for things that were deleted in Windows.)

If you want to empty the trash or remove deleted files on an external drive, connect it to the Mac and empty the Trash on the Dock. (Keep in mind that it'll also remove deleted items on the internal disk for the logged in user.) Or if you know what files were deleted on the external drive, then select those in the Trash and delete them.

If you're unsure which disk a deleted item is on, you would have to right-click the item in Trash and Get Info to see where it resides. Here's an example of a file I deleted on my Sandisk thumb drive.

 

[gradi]

Let's say I have these external drives:

1. SSD1 (APFS)
2. SSD2 (exFAT)
3. SSD3 (exFAT)
4. HDD1 (APFS)
5. HDD2 (APFS)
6. HDD3 (exFAT)

Over the last few years all have been at one time or another connected to multiple Macs. And all from time to time on all the various Macs have had files deleted (so apparently put in what people here are calling the hidden .Trash folder for each external drive).

If I connect SSD1 to my current Mac and then empty the Trash then you are saying it will empty both the internal drive Trash (I wish it wouldn't do that right now) and the SSD1 trash (even files that were deleted on other Macs, not this one)?

Then if I connect SSD2 to my Mac what do I do? The Trash on this Mac has already been emptied just above. How do I delete the trash on SSD2, SSD3, HDD1, and HDD2? Connecting them all at the same time is not possible.

This is all so clean and easy on Windows and not confusing at all. I realize maybe so far I am just not understanding something, but even after reading all the replies I still do not know how to empty the trash on each of my external drives or even finding out how much is in the trash on each drive.

Thank you to everyone who is trying to help.

 

[iStorm]

If I connect SSD1 to my current Mac and then empty the Trash then you are saying it will empty both the internal drive Trash (I wish it wouldn't do that right now) and the SSD1 trash (even files that were deleted on other Macs, not this one)?

Yes, it will delete your user account's trash and SSD1's trash (even files that were deleted on other Macs).

If the Mac has other user accounts, their trash will be left untouched since your account wouldn't have access to their trash. (When talking about the internal drive or "Macintosh HD", there is no global trash like we see on the external drives. Each user account has their own private trash instead.)

The Trash on the dock isn't actually a folder. It shows the contents of all trash bins it has access to (the logged in user account's trash and any currently connected drive's trash).

Then if I connect SSD2 to my Mac what do I do? The Trash on this Mac has already been emptied just above. How do I delete the trash on SSD2, SSD3, HDD1, and HDD2? Connecting them all at the same time is not possible.

Connect SSD2. If there are any deleted files on that drive, they will now show up in Trash. Empty the Trash. Repeat for each drive...connect, check Trash, and empty it if needed.

Also, I see you mentioned exFAT drives, which is compatible with Windows and Mac. Windows and macOS keep deleted files in their own Recycle/Trash bin. If you delete a file in Windows, it goes into the Recycle Bin. If you delete a file in macOS, it goes into the Trash. Emptying the Recycle Bin in Windows will not clear out the files that were deleted in macOS. Likewise, emptying the Trash in macOS will not clear out the files that were deleted in Windows. You will need to connect it to both computers to empty their respective Recycle/Trash bin.

 

[DeltaMac]

The simple steps are to start with an empty trash (with no external storage attached)
Plug in your drive, and check the trash. Anything in there now is the trash on the external.
Empty the trash. That's all you need to do.
You have to connect each drive, then empty the trash. If you connect any drive, and nothing appears in the trash, then that's all you need to do on THAT drive.

 

[gilby101]

This is all so clean and easy on Windows and not confusing at all.

And on a Mac, when you empty Trash you delete all the macOS trashed files on all the currently connected disks. Pretty simple?

 

[gradi]

Yes, it will delete your user account's trash and SSD1's trash (even files that were deleted on other Macs).

If the Mac has other user accounts, their trash will be left untouched since your account wouldn't have access to their trash. (When talking about the internal drive or "Macintosh HD", there is no global trash like we see on the external drives. Each user account has their own private trash instead.)

The Trash on the dock isn't actually a folder. It shows the contents of all trash bins it has access to (the logged in user account's trash and any currently connected drive's trash).


Connect SSD2. If there are any deleted files on that drive, they will now show up in Trash. Empty the Trash. Repeat for each drive...connect, check Trash, and empty it if needed.

Thank you! This is the sort of info I was trying to get. I just tried this by sequentially connecting all but one of my external drives and things behave as you said. I emptied the trash for each of them a few minutes ago. The first time, unfortunately, I had to also delete my internal drive trash even though I didn't want to, but that is okay. I keep one drive off site all the time and I rotate it from time to time. I still need to take care of it.

As an example, my 2tb SSD had 50gb or so of stuff in the trash, some of it going back a couple of years. As you know, it isn't just files we explicitly delete that goes in the trash. Also, if you copy a file to an external drive and it already exists (older version of the same file) then the new file replaces the old one and old one gets put in the trash. I use Lightroom Classic pretty much every day and every evening I run the Lightroom Classic Backup command that checks the integrity of the catalog and then saves it all in a backup zip file. I then copy that LrC backup zip file (about 1gb) to my external drive as a backup copy. That means I had tons of old 1gb LrC backup files on all my external drives (along with other files).

Also, I see you mentioned exFAT drives, which is compatible with Windows and Mac. Windows and macOS keep deleted files in their own Recycle/Trash bin. If you delete a file in Windows, it goes into the Recycle Bin. If you delete a file in macOS, it goes into the Trash. Emptying the Recycle Bin in Windows will not clear out the files that were deleted in macOS. Likewise, emptying the Trash in macOS will not clear out the files that were deleted in Windows. You will need to connect it to both computers to empty their respective Recycle/Trash bin.

Yes, that is what I assumed. For the exFAT drives which I use also on my Windows PC I regularly empty the trash on them using the Windows Disk Cleanup program.

 

[gradi]

Now one more question. Above iStorm got me fixed up for today and I very much appreciate it. Thank you again.

What I would really like is to be able to individually empty the trash on an external drive without affecting the trash of the internal drive or any other external drive that is connected though. The Windows Disk Cleanup programs allows that. I figure that is probably a way to do this on Mac too. I thought possibly Disk Utility could do it, but I see no way to do it with it.

I searched and I found a free app called Curb that, I think, does it:

https://curb.en.softonic.com/mac

I found this program using Bing Copilot (AI chat) and it suggested it. Anyone here used it? I, naturally, prefer to use an Apple Mac program rather than a 3rd party, but if people here recommend this one or another one then I can go with that.

 

[gilby101]

I searched and I found a free app called Curb that, I think, does it:

https://curb.en.softonic.com/mac

Sorry, that is a very old (16 years) program and will only run on very old versions of macOS.

 

[DeltaMac]

I looked at that Curb app, too. It's a 32-bit app, more than 15 years old (no updates, as far as I can discover.)
32-bit means that it won't work on any macOS system newer than 10.14 (Mojave)

 

[gradi]

Does anyone know of an Apple MacOS app that can do it? I looked at Disk Utility and thought for sure it could do it since it makes sense it should, but I cannot see a way using it. Is there another Apple app I should be looking at? Or a non-Apple app?

 

[gradi]

A few minutes ago I thought I had a good idea. I thought that if I open the Trash in Finder I can sort the files by source (internal drive, external SSD1, external SSD2, etc.). All I had to do was go to Finder -> View -> Show View Options -> Show Columns and then select Source as one of the columns. Then in Finder I could click on the Source column and have all the files sorted by where they are located. Then it would be easy to either select all from a particular drive or a subset from a particular drive, right click on them and then select Delete Immediately. Voilà, it is done!

But, it turns out there is no Source column.