I have a 80gb harddrive thats basically full. I did an online back up and then started deleting files. I cleared about 12 gb of room. I was stoked. But then eventually the files I deleted would show up again. Every time. Back to teh exact same place they came from. From my Finder window I can actually watch the GB Available number just count down as the files reappear. I've done Secure Empty Trash, I did repair disk with my DVD (computer runs faster now!), but I cannot get these files to disappear for good and I end up with a full disk over and over. Or a worthless computer. I have timeline but its always been off cause I don't trust these external harddrives so its never been on. Getting frustrated. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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I empty trash but it slowly reappears
- Thread starter dudewithamac
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The files are mostly large photoshop and illustrator documents I created for clients. They're under my Documents folder. They take up a lot of room and I can store them safely online somewhere else.
If you haven't already done so, begin by restarting your Mac. That resolves many problems with deleting files. For problems deleting items or emptying the trash, you may find some useful ideas here:
I followed the instructions for the link you sent me:
Can't Empty Trash on a Mac
It seemed to work. I will keep an eye on it and see if they show back up. Thank you very much for your help.
Can't Empty Trash on a Mac
It seemed to work. I will keep an eye on it and see if they show back up. Thank you very much for your help.
I used the Utilities>Terminal way of deleting the files but they have all returned and once again my disk is full. Anybody have ideas?
Just so I am clear, what you are saying is for example you have a PChop file in ~/Documents that you are deleting and it ends up on the trash like it should. Then you are successfully emptying the trash, and after that at some point the exact same PChop files appears back in the ~/Documents folder?
On a default OS X installation, I can't think of any possible way for that to happen. Do you by any chance have some sort of sync program running that might do this?
Hi, Weaselboy. Its becoming quite frustrating. I'm simply deleting a number of folders basically with large files in them from my Documents folder. I've emptied the trash in every way possible, rebooted, did disk utility, tried the terminal Trash way... I delete them and within a couple hours they are all back. I use godaddy for online backup but I don't have it synced or anything. I just drag a folder over when I want to get it backed up. I have an external drive which I don't use except for movies and I only hook it directly up when I do that. Currently the Maxtor unplugged and has been that way for a while. The trash had a lost + found folder in it today but not much to show with that. I can't seem to find anyone else that has had this exact issue. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Do you or did you ever sync with Adobe Cloud? Look through all of your apps and running processes. Do you have anything remotely related to protecting files? Something that you maybe installed a long time ago and forgot?
I checked in to my running processes. Just the regular software and then of course a bunch of stuff I don't understand. But nothing indicating backup software. I have no account with mobile me, I'm logged out of my online backup account. Looking at my "active processes" in Applications>Utilities there's one called 'BackupStatusItem' and a bunch of processes come on and go off every few seconds. I never mess with this kind of stuff, cause I've always owned a great mac that never has problems. So my background skills are not great. Just did a little research. One of my processes is apparently Workspace Desktop of Godaddy, my online backup space. I just uninstalled it because apparently that's what some of the processes were. I always log in through the browser anyhow so I will see how that goes. Thanks for the line of thought.
I ask about the cloud sync and "protection" type applications because I have a vague memory of something like this happening to me or my friend or wife. I really can't remember the details as it was a while ago but nevertheless the memory is there.
Also I used to use a plugin for Photoshop that is design to automatically save your work. Generally speaking you would set it up to save very x minutes to a specific folder, but if you closed Photoshop or it crashed it would create a save the next time you opened it. It was a decent plugin and it did exactly what it promised, but I remember that I eventually got rid of it because of a similar issue. I think I had deleted a file and it either kept coming back when I would open Photoshop or keep reminding me about it. Sorry can't remember all the details.
Your problem seems very similar. Theres nothing in OSX that I can think of that would automatically retrieve deleted files or folders. I also remember using a piece of software in Windows a few years ago that would monitor the trash basket for files that you would specify, and if it detected such a file it would automatically restore it.
All the above is why I think it may be an app or something that was meant to be used as a safety valve. Something that may be part of an application you may not realize. Like Hazel can do a few different things automatically for example. You don't have MacKeeper or CleanmyMac do you? These two are known to cause issues and should be avoided at all costs.
That's the extent of my current train of thought
so I hope it was at least somewhat helpful. Make sure to update when you figure this out or if you have any other questions.Good luck
Well, it appears for now its fixed! Its been 24 hours, I left my computer on just to see if the files would reappear overnight and they did not. I am pretty confident at this point that the problem is fixed. And the problem? A couple months ago I signed on to Godaddy for online backup. I downloaded a backing up program. Since downloading it, I manually was backing everything up through my browser and never even realized there was some type of "sync" connection going on. I simply uninstalled the program and haven't had a problem since then (24 hours ago). I think I got it figured out. Thanks for everyone's help.