Delete a ton of trash mega fast?

[Jesse Smith]

I got about a terabyte of back-up data to delete from Time Machine, which takes a mega long time. Is there any way to move it to the trash and delete stuff super fast?

Command-Option-Shift-Delete doesn't do it.

Terminal

cd ~/.Trash

then

rm -r *

also doesn't do it. And yes, I know about not having 'Empty Trash Securely' selected!


I get no 'Delete Backup' option using the gear menu where the back-ups are listed. Just a 'Move to trash' option. Which for one back-up in the trash, got to almost 1,600,000 items before it started deleting. Any one know how to delete back-ups super fast?

 

[miles01110]

The fastest way would be to reformat your Time Machine drive. Assuming you just want to delete one backup, there is no faster way.

btw, "Empty Trash" and "rm -r" are the same thing.

 

[John Doe 57]

Which for one back-up in the trash, got to almost 1,600,000 items before it started deleting.

Kudos! 1.6M items in the trash. Thats unbelievable!

Don't really have any helpful solutions for you though. Sorry. Just can't get over that number!

 

[Makosuke]

The fastest way would be to reformat your Time Machine drive.

This is a very good tip. Any time you've got a drive with a lot of files that you just want empty, reformatting is drastically faster than deleting the files, plus you have the added bonus of wiping out any hidden index, etc files.

Particularly useful with slow media like flash drives.

Obviously this only works when you really want everything off the drive, though.