macOS Sierra | How to Delete Undeletable Files from Trash Bin
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2017
- When you manually delete Time Machine Backups, these files cannot be deleted by emptying the trash. Use the terminal to delete these files.
Any folder containing a space, must be kept within "quotes."
1. Open Terminal
2. Type in cd /Volumes/"Name of Your Drive"/.Trashes/ ...to navigate to your drives trashes folder.
3. Type in sudo ls 501/ ...to check folders listing.
4. Type in sudo rm -rf 501/Backups.backupdb/ ....or whatever your Backups.backupdb folder name, remember to put the folder name in quotes if there's a space in the folder name.
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I've tried virtually everything under the sun to accomplish this, including many terminal-based commands from Apple's forums and your procedure was both clear and it worked. Thanks so much.
Finally a reliable method for doing this after much googling and dead ends. Cheers!
Thank you for a very straightforward and effective process. Not being able to empty the Trash of two "undeletable" folders was driving me nuts. I followed your procedure … TRASH EMPTIED!!
Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Great instructions provided, Kellan. I really appreciate the help with this one. I had deleted around 37 backup folders from my external drive, which contained mostly RAW files. I mainly use LR on my iMac, and not much else. But with close to 4,000 RAW files, it is unbelievable how long it has taken me to clean up these folders out of my trash. At first, it took about 5 minutes after I executed the first command. Towards the end, it has taken up to 30 minutes. I have four folders left. Needless to say, I'll never make this mistake again. But I just wanted to take a moment and really let you know how much I appreciate your answer to solve the problem. You're a great instructor.
This was so helpful! I had these undeleteable backup files in my trash bin for years. I really appreciate this easy to follow tutorial.
Thank you so much, Kellan!! You've solved a problem I've had for so long that's been driving me absolutely up the wall in less than 3 minutes. I rarely comment on videos but I wanted to take the time to thank you and let you know how much I appreciate your time and help.
Wow, thank you so much! You filled in some missing pieces of information that none of the other tutorials I found online mentioned, and it finally worked!
Despite this being a 5 year old video, I have a 12 year old mac with High Sierra. I had stupidly placed a backup file in the trash and it would not delete. This fix worked perfectly and first time. Thank you Kellen Reck very much indeed.
Fantastic tutorial! You have helped me clear those pesky "undeletable files from my backup disk in my trash bin that have been bugging me for ages! Took a while to replicate the steps on my mac but once that is cleared, it was a wonderful feeling to finally resolved this issue. Thank you very much for your help!
Amazing - this is the first CLEAR and concise explanation I've seen how to do this. Mine hadn't been working as nowhere explained that you needed " " for your HD name in order for it to work. Thank you!!
Probably obvious, but if you have LOADS of files like I did, I found it useful to open Notepad, type out the first part of the command : sudo rm -rf 501/... copy and paste into terminal on each return line ... then manually type in the trash named item after it. Just made it a bit quicker. Thanks again, this has been driving me mad!
Glad this helped out!
Thank You X 1000. Worked perfectly ! I needed to reboot as one of the folders was still in the trash, and didn't go away. The first one took about 10 seconds and I figured the other would also. when it didn't, I checked terminal that I typed it correctly. I guess I should have been more patient. So glad to have an empty trash can !! All the best to you sir !!
This is the greatest tutorial video ever. I needed this so bad because no other video, help forum, etc. helped. Thanks!
Thanks for this! After reading a bunch of articles this was the simplest workaround with the clearest instructions
The greatest video ever! I am watching for the second time this year to fix my problem. I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to find this video again. Kellan Reck rocks!!!
Worked like a charm! Thanks :) Had to manually delete a botched TM backup and it drove me crazy not to know why that last tiny folder was not willing to go blasted
Amazing! I had been banging my head against the wall trying to solve this. Just like some of the comments below you need a little bit of patience to wait for the larger backup folders to disappear from the trash , but it works. I found that I had to put the folder name in quotes (step 4) regardless of folder name/spaces. Thank you very much.
Thanks for making this easy and clear, and fast. Tons of info in a short period of time. You're an excellent instructor. much appreciated.
Thank you so much!
Thank you for making this! It was driving me crazy! Worked like a charm. I was confused when you said DRIVE, then I realized the DRIVE is actually the name of the EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE that you see under the icon for the external hard drive.
Kellan Reck, YOU ROCK! It worked absolutely perfectly!
Just a tip for those who cannot delete some of the files with "complicated names" - just change the name of the file to simple 1, 2 or year and it'll go like butter!
Thank you!
That did not work from me either. I've tried just about every solution but cannot delete the two folders in my trash bin. By the way the folders are empty.
Great solution. Thank you so much for the guidance. Your instructions were clear and concise. Empty trash can means problem gone.
wow!!! well done. it works great. and much easier than going through the multiple reboot and terminal commands in Recovery mode I have seen elsewhere. thanks a lot!
Amazing TIP !!! Thanks so much, I also tried to delete old back up files from Time Machine that I wanted to delete and these seemed to not want to go away. It was a time consuming process but this clearly was the only way to do it correctly
Legend.I have Mac OS High Sierra 2018 and this trick is still worked like magic.
super helpful, I've had a backup folder sitting in my trash for over a year since a HD upgrade. Wish I had found this sooner
You are a legend! I entered "sudo rm -rf 501/2018*" (without quotes) to delete all my files without needing to type them in one at a time.
Nice and simple. I tried following somebody else's instructions and they sucked. Your instructions where easy to understand and my trash is empty!
Thanks, Kellan. Of all the suggestions on the interweb, only yours seemed to work and it was clearly explained. However, although this worked brilliantly for the first twenty or so backups, it then refused to delete any more. In the end I found it easier to attach an external drive, move (not copy) the backups from the bin and then just reformat the external drive .
I have spent days trying to delete files from trash. Came back to it today and found your video. Huge Thanks - this worked perfectly for me.
For anyone having a go at this I thought you might be interested to know that the files that had been sitting there for a long while deleted very quickly (having less content in them). The news ones took quite a few minutes, so be patient.
You saved me from a real hassle. Thank you! I recommend copy and paste when entering the names of the files you want to delete. Take care.
Well this really helped - a lot! Thanks for the tutorial. Wayyyyy easier than some other tutorials that tell you to restart with SIP turned off. BAM, saved me so much time and now I have a happily empty trashcan!
Kellan, thank you you so much for this - I finally have an empty trash after hours of googling and dead ends. It didn't work the first time I tried it though - I thought this might be due to the fact I had changed the original backup folder name to something with random characters, but I then changed it to "dump", ran the commands again and hey presto, watched that stubborn little blighter disappear. Awesome!
Hey, this has given me a headache for like a day now. Very simple steps, worked like a charm! Many thanks!
Thank you very much for the extremely clear step-by-step instructions, I was going crazy trying to delete these empty folders. It worked great!
thank you! This has been bugging me for months! So nice to have an empty trashcan again. :)
This worked perfectly for me on High Sierra 10.13.6 . Time machine was on my external hard disk. The name had no spaces, but I still put the name of the hard drive in quotes in the cd command. ex > cd /Volumes/"TIME-MACH"/.trashes . All remaining commands executed perfectly. Thank you!! Very helpful.
Thanks for this comment - that's what I needed. It seems like this would be a very helpful thing to point out in the comments - i.e., do these commands on the volume where your backups reside.
This worked like a champ! I've never done any of that type stuff before, very simple and helpful. Thanks!
Pro tip: You can remove multiple files at once by using an asterisk (*). For example, if you're trying to delete all files from 2015, you can use the command:
"sudo rm -rf 501/2015*"
without the quotes and it will remove all files that start with the year 2015 from that directory.
If you want to remove everything from a particular month, for instance, you can type:
"sudo rm -rf 501/2015-09*"
and it will delete all files that were created in September.
You are a time saver!
I just used this technique to delete 60+ files. it was tedious but it worked. Now I know not to delete my time machine backups the improper way. Thanks a bunch!
Thanks sooooo much, Kellan. It had not worked for me before because I had not been putting TWO spaces in front of -rf. Thanks for speaking aloud as you typed. Thank you!!!!
I couldn't pick up on the two spaces instruction, and his cursor only moves one space. Are you sure?
Very straightforward and unbelievably helpful! Thank you!
You Sir, are the Man! Finally I have been able to scrub my external hard drives from those blasted Time Machine back-ups.
Thanks so much for your video tutorial on how to delete those undeletable files, was searching forever for an answer until i stumbled on your account thanks so much :)
WOW, I searched high and low on how to delete these files!! This worked perfectly!!! Thank you!!!
seriously god bless you that 2 minute video solved my issues - should have looked at this first! worked PERFECT!!!
A zillion thank yous!!! I'd tried everything. Yours are the clearest, most detailed, and helpful instructions. So grateful!
Oh my goodness, thank you! After many attempts and following many online instructions, this video is the ONLY that actually got the job done!! Half a day gone, but mission accomplished! :)
Omg, THANK you so much man! It was driving me crazy. First, I tried to delete Time Machine back ups right in Time Machine but for some reason it wasn't working. So I decided to manually drag them to trash and empty it. And BAM, that was the moment I realized i fucked up. I've already been trying everything i can to get rid of these back ups and nothing was working. And finally u're a lifesaver! The only thing is that my back up is around 400gb and it takes forever to delete :) But at least it's finally going and I'm not stuck with it
Dan Fire glad this helped! I was in your same spot a while back haha
Thank you! This is working! Very SLOWLY (every folder takes several minutes to delete), but it's working! Appreciate the help.
Finally my trash can is empty again 😭😍 Thank you!
Thanks for this - simple and helpful. Worked perfectly.
Silly me - I thought I could select some folders and delete them !
Thank you! It worked. Your instructions were to the point and very clear.
I am forever in your debt. This problem has been bedeviling me for months. You have created a very clear and direct tutorial for fixing this. I did have a few stumbles getting it to work at first, but only because I did not listen closely and missed the fact that I needed change the directory to point to my Time Machine Backups to delete the files in the Trash Bin on my iMac. Once I entered the correct path, and once I changed the sudo rm -rf 501 to sudo rm -rf 502 this solution worked perfectly and all those pesky files have finally been deleted from my Trash Bin. The only bad thing was that I had quite a lot of deadwood in there and having to delete them one at a time was tedious. Is there a way to batch delete things like this? Oh well, that is a question for another time. For now . . . a mere thank you seems woefully inadequate for the service your excellent tutorial has provided. Now I'm gonna go stare at my newly empty Trash Bin with satisfied delight :-)
I can't believe it! Files are gone for good now! You made my day
Thank. You. So. Much.
I've been trying to delete some backup files I manually deleted for a year now and I'm so glad I found your video!
AMAZING... Thanks buddy, this has been bugging me for weeks. Great video
Thank you so much for this, Kellan. You are my personal hero for the day.
Thank you so much. I this was driving me crazy for days until I seen this video. You are a lifesaver.....
The list of deletable files in the trash did not list out after I put in my password (like in the video). I thought I was doing something wrong. Then instead of rewatching the video, I read the instructions carefully and realized I needed to type in the folder name that my deletable files were in. Instead of typing an individual file, which I did on 7 tries, I finally typed the folder name. I wasn't sure that worked either but something felt different. I walked away for half an hour and came back to my computer to find all of the files deleted. Read the instructions carefully. It all seems simple, but the tiniest omission will have you wringing your hands. Thank you very much, VT.
Happy to help!
You deserve a high five for this one. Hero of the day right here, TYVM
Although "Backups.backupdb" didn't delete from Trash after the Terminal instructions, it did remove the system restrictions so my next attempt to empty the trash worked. Thanks for your tutorial!
Thanx Kellan! Had the same issue in my MacBook Pro running High Sierra. Your step by step guide worked like a charm! You have a new Subscriber. Cheers!
Yay!!!! I just retried it and noticed I was doing something wrong, I was putting a capital i instead of an ls. Thank you for this tutorial!!!! That was super frustrating to have just sitting there taking up space.
Thanks mate - this was driving me crazy - well played sir!
Thanks man, I think it worked! The only downside to this method is there's no progress bar so if you've got a big file/folder to delete (mine's 3.5TB) it'll take a while but you won't know how far along you are. I'm guessing I'll know when it's done because the next command line pops up but who knows how long that'll be! Still, this seems like its solved my problem so thank you!
UPDATE: You can actually sort of use the 'get info' function as a makeshift progress bar. Right click on the drive that you're deleting from and select Get Info, then watch as the available space gradually increases!
Thanks for this! I was wondering the same thing. When he deletes the file in the video it just vanishes straight away where as I thought that nothing was happening so wasn't sure what to do. The 'Get Info' work around was a great idea.
Thanks very much for this! I was going mad trying to get rid of these files. It took a while to get rid of them all but this worked like a charm.
I had the exact same situation and your solution worked perfectly. Thanks so much
My portable hard drive just breathed a massive sigh of relief. Many many thank you's 👍
I had the exact same issue as you and looked for over an hour on the internet to find a solution. I didn´t find anything that my little brain would understand.
Then I checked youtube and the second link - to your video - helped. It worked perfectly.
Thank you very much for this video!
The only thing I am wondering (and definitely not checking out by myself...) is if you can do:
sudo rm -rf 501/*
to delete the entire content in the recycle bin at once.
Worked! the quotes was what I needed
For well over 1 year I had 360,000+ files stuck in my trash. (Deleted backup files by accident). After a few goes at this it worked. Thank you so much for your help with this
Very happy to hear it helped!
April 2020! It still works. You are a genius.
Thank You! This was super easy to follow and worked perfectly!
Thank you so much. I called Apple support about this same issue. They tried to help but then the file reappeared in the trash. Great instructions AND it worked!
Amazing - not only did it work exactly as described, your process was easy to follow. Thank you!
Thank you very much man! I was going crazy with that crazy files there! Worked just fine!! Thank you!
This is one of the best things ever. Deleting old backups (one at a time!!!!) via Time Machine is painful and it often hangs. Going forward, I will just continue to delete them via Finder and use this cmd to empty the trash.
BTW, I tried the following and it worked perfectly:
sudo rm -rf 501/*/
Avoids having to copy/paste (or type) for each directory name.
Great thank you, it did work for me only after a few times, I had the error no such file or directory, finally, it was because I was writing the name of my drive Macintosh HD, whereas my back up is going on an external hard drive, so the right Volumes name was the one of my hard drive, hope it can help some of you struggling as well.
This worked really well! I tried to delete a Time Machine backup by using Trash (I know the correct way to now) and it would not empty for the life of me. At first it did not disappear after I entered the command but once I restarted my computer and checked it was gone! Thank you!
Very nice Kellan. Worked like a charm. Thank you for the clear and concise instructions. You ROCK!!
Appreciate the kind words, Dylan!
literally saved the day man ,,, i also had to use 502 instead but worked like a charm, even apple didnt know how to fix this
This totally works! Just need to make sure you have space in between cd /Volumes/. Thank you!
Worked like a charm! This was giving me so much trouble for so long. Thanks!
Glad it helped!
Thanks so much brother! Those files have been doing my head in for ages, could have never worked this out ha ha ha
WOW... thank you for this tutorial, great information, I was able to delete my time machine backups completely... :)
this video must've helped me 10x by now. thank you man !!!
Love that!
Thank you very much. It worked for me. It was very struggling to try to figure out how to get rid of these unbelievable files from my trash it’s literally exactly how you are describing the video
Happy to help!
thank you! managed to get it to work. For some folders I had to enter the file name twice, would work the second time around, no idea why.
Excellent video! Thank you for posting. Worked perfectly!
If you're trying to delete a large back up file it could take a minute or 2.
Sorry Comment made it sound like your solution was simple, just can't thank you enough, been having problems with trash for a week and nobody had the solution, thanks again
Thank you! Been driving me up the wall for months!
Thank you for this video! I’ve been searching for hours to determine how to do this. I wish this video had come up in my Google search.
Thanks, Kellan! It worked like charm
Fabulous....Worked finally. Thank you so very much. Big thumbs up for you.
I could kiss you. I struggled with this for so long. Even wiping my iMac to factory settings didn't even work but this did. Thanks so much!
Glad it helped!
Been searching for months for this solution! Thanks!
Glad to help!
THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!!! Apple support had me beyond irritated but they even directed me to youtube!! Glad i found this video!!!
Thank you, that worked perfectly for me. You're a genius Kellan Reck and thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Thanks, Bill!
Thanks a lot. It worked after months of useless trying! Great Video. So clear and helpful. Thanks again.
Thank you so much man! I've just been following your instructions and it works!
Thank you!!! Didn’t work for me until the only items in my trash were the ones that it would not let me deleted either he empty trash button. But once I only had the files needing to be force deleted this worked like a charm!