Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I have an old MacBook Pro I'm bringing back to life. I copied a bunch of files (maybe 20) into an external hard drive to bring over to my current laptop. Each file has lots of stuff in it, but....
I'm trying to delete those files from the laptop now, and the Trash said there were over 375,000 items to empty.
How can this be possible?
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
What do you mean how is that possible? It says that because that is how many items to be deleted.
Here is what you should do if you want to reset the old computer to be as it was when new:
What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
What I meant was, I know I didn't create 375,000 files. I'm trying to understand what's actually being deleted. Are there hidden things that are created with each new document or file, which are now being deleted?
I'm trying to take stuff I want to keep OFF the old laptop, and probably wipe it clean afterwards, and use it with a piano keyboard arranger for music only. No mail, no Adobe, no Microsoft suite, etc.
When it told me it was going to delete what turned out to be over 500,000 items, I began to freak out. It's now doing the deleting which is taking a long time, but there's only 87,000 items left. I just wondered what is actually happening.
Thanks for the link.
Sorry I'm confused again. The Trash window worked its way down from 500,000 items, which took a long time, and I thought it was finally going to say it was empty. Nope - it got done to zero, but now it says Items to Delete and it's got a number that's working it's way back UP from zero to, I presume, 500,000 again. Is this right? I hate to interrupt it and have to start all over. I've never deleted this much trash before so I've no experience with this. It's back up to - (minus) 26,000 to delete and climbing.
Normal?
The system and apps consist of and create thousands of items over time.
You can not delete system files from a drive you are booted into. This is why I provided the link to the process to reset a Mac.
375000 items to delete?
