preparing to delete...forever

[Nerveless Ned]

Hi Mac people,

My problem is I can't empty my trash. When I try it starts counting up the items to delete until it gets into the 10s of millions and keeps going.

The files in the two problem folders were originally several Gb's of image files, jpgs, psds etc. now they look like something I have not seen before. If the attachment worked there is an image of how it looks in finder.

The files were thrown in the trash from a remote hard disk. I have OSX.4 on a 2.16 Ghz core 2 duo iMac, 2 gb ram.

Your help is, of course, much appreciated.

Neddy

 

[t0mat0]

Not seen that before. You can manually select a folder or file in the trash to delete specifically, rather than deleting all of them at once - that might help? But likely worht waiting to hear from others about the files in there.

 

[veshnu]

Re

Open Terminal..
cd /Users/USER_NAME/.Trash
rm -rf *

This should delete everything...

 

[maflynn]

One quick word of caution with rm.

type man rm first (in the terminal) to see the man pages, so you have an understanding of the flags and what it does. Also be very very sure you are in the folder you intend to execute the command.

 

[stuarthatto]

Be VERY careful with rm -rf *

As has been said make sure you are definitely in the right directory before issuing that command...

 

[Gregg2]

Users/USER_NAME/.Trash

I was looking for that .Trash folder in the Finder. Is it invisible by default?

 

[belvdr]

I was looking for that .Trash folder in the Finder. Is it invisible by default?

Yes. In a *nix world, anything beginning with a . is hidden.

 

[stuarthatto]

ls -al will list the hidden files...