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Accidental removal / deletion of external drive ./Trashes directory

I've deleted the ./Trashes directory from one of my external drives, and now am wondering where do deleted files go? Can I resurrect that directory?


Running High Sierra 10.13.6 on an 'elder' iMac 21"

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 10, 2020 12:27 PM

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6 replies

Oct 10, 2020 1:45 PM in response to mouthbreather0

I hink it auto rebuilds it,but...


Empty and recreate an account's Trash

The following procedure will "kill two birds with one stone." It will both:

  1. Empty the Trash of an affected account.
  2. Create a new ~/.Trash directory, with correct ownership and permissions, for that account.

Perform the following steps in the order specified:

1.If the affected account is protected by FileVault, log in to the affected account, then switch to and log in to your Admin account via Fast User Switching. Otherwise, log in to your Admin account.2.Open Terminal, located in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities folder.3.At the Terminal prompt, type one of the following commands:

If the affected account is:Then type the Terminal command:Your Admin account:sudo rm -ri ~/.TrashAnother user account:sudo rm -ri /Users/user_name/.Trash

where user_name is the short name of the affected account.

Note that:

  • There is a single space after each of the terms sudo, rm, and -ri in the command.
  • Assure you have typed the command exactly as specified before proceeding: typographical errors in this command can have dire consequences, including erasing your hard drive!

4.Press Return.5.Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.6.Type y for yes in response to the subsequent prompts to delete each file in the trash and finally the affected .Trash folder itself. The prompts are finished when the Terminal prompt returns.7.If the affected account is your Admin account, log out. If the affected account was another user account that is logged in via Fast User Switching, log out of that account.8.Log in to the affected account. It will now have a new, working, and empty Trash.

Steps 1-6 remove all files in the affected account's Trash as well as deleting the hidden and invisible ~/.Trash directory for that account. The remaining steps result in recreating the affected account's Trash, with proper ownership and permissions.

Oct 10, 2020 2:48 PM in response to mouthbreather0

After logging back in to regular account, I deleted a file on that external drive. Lo and behold, the .Trashes directory was back, and my deleted file was in it.


~ [user] sudo ls -al /Volumes/giga/.Trashes/501

total 16

drwx------@ 3 _unknown _unknown 136 Oct 10 17:43 .

d-wx-wx-wt 3 _unknown _unknown 102 Oct 10 17:43 ..

-rw-r--r--@ 1 _unknown _unknown 6148 Oct 10 17:43 .DS_Store

drwxr-xr-x@ 4 _unknown _unknown 170 Oct 10 17:41 20 Encyclopedia Books Collection PDF October 6 2020 Set 33


So it did work afterall. Thank You again eh!


Accidental removal / deletion of external drive ./Trashes directory

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