Huge amount of crap in Trashcan

[dscuber9000]

I'm deleting some of the older back-ups on my hard-drive. I new it would take a while to delete them... but I didn't realize it would take about 12 hours. It won't let me put them back on my hard-drive, so is there any way I can clean out specific folders in the trash instead of having to do it all at once?

 

[yetanotherdave]

yes, to delete specific files from the trash, open terminal and type

sudo rm

then drag the folder you want deleted from the trash into the terminal window. Hit enter, it will ask for your password, and then it's gone.

make sure you put a space after rm, before you drag the file from the trash onto the terminal window

 

[dscuber9000]

Alright, when I try to open Terminal it tells me "The Administrator has set your shell to an illegal value." I'm the admin and only user of my Mac.

 

[ergdegdeg]

You don't normally need the "sudo" in the command above. Please make absolutely sure that you have the exact path you want in the command BEFORE you press enter.

 

[Hal Itosis]

I new it would take a while to delete them... but I didn't realize it would take about 12 hours.

Sounds like you're doing a secure delete. Probably unnecessary, and definitely a time killer. Go with normal deletions in the future, unless there's some reasonable justification... in which case it might be simpler to delete that special stuff separately from the more average/boring/harmless documents.