Trash has 250,000 items to delete

Hi S.K.

I would strongly suggest you try your best to get the Trash emptied. If you don't get the stuff removed from Trash your Mac is going to run out of free space soon. If the free space gets run too low, it will cause poor performance and file corruption.

Allan

HI Sonia,

Try here...

250,000 files? I hope these aren't any system files ??????????

You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

How To Fix Stubborn Trash and Why it Won't Delete





Carolyn 🙂

Might I ask what kinds of files you have in there?

Any Time Machine backups?

Carolyn & Allan have given you excellent advice so far; I just want to rule out any problems you may face.

~Lyssa

I asked because some folks use Finder to delete backups from their Time Machine drive. This is a very, very bad idea & often causes problems with the computer.

In your case, I think you just have a LOT of big files, and it will take a while to remove them all. If I find I need to remove a lot of large files, I first move them to a folder called "Trash" which is on my desktop. Once I have all the files together, I move some of them to the actual trash bin. This way, if emptying the trash gets stuck along the way, it's not so hard to figure out which file caused the jam. The system may think a file is in use or locked and that will bring the trash emptying process to a complete halt.

If you want to stop the trash emptying process, at least for now, you can relaunch the Finder by clicking the Apple icon in the upper left corner, clicking "Force Quit," then highlighting Finder & hitting the enter key or clicking "Relaunch."

I do agree that you need to get this stuff removed, but perhaps doing it in smaller chunks will help.

~Lyssa

This must be a record of some kind for emptying the Trash 😉




Carolyn 🙂

No record. Last year my brothers PPC laptop (forget which apple model) had over 50,000.

When I asked him why he never deleted anything, his reply, "I never know when I would want one of those files"

I had to boot to single user mode, because some of the files were locked, and cd inside of the appropriate .Trash folder to "rm *" them.

Glad the OP got them deleted.

Good to hear it turned out well for you--and thanks very much for awarding stars to users who helped you. We certainly appreciate it!

~Lyssa

I secure empty my trash regularly. Sometimes it takes just seconds but occasionally even though it looks as though there are only a few items it says 'items to delete' anything up to 20000. Just now I am deleting 12000. Only item in there I haven't put there in a folder called 'recovered files'. I haven't recovered files intentionally? Should I try to use Empty Trash instead of Secure Empty?

Using Secure Empty Trash is overkill for most users. When you simply Empty the trash, the computer marks those spots on the hard drive as available for writing new data, but the old data could be recovered with the right tools and a bit of luck. If you Secure Empty Trash, the computer writes a 0 in the places the file was located--decreasing the odds of rescuing/uncovering the file.

If you're not dealing with sensitive data, just emptying the trash is fine.

~Lyssa

Many thanks Lyssa