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
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:
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:
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.
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!
Hello and thank you for the response. I did follow your instructions, but it did not create the /.Trashes directory on the external drive. Not sure of the details of how external drives are handled. It sounds like your instructions are aimed at my local HD? But I did include /Volumes/giga for the path to the drive.
Hmmm, the new one should've been empty!?
Yes, it was. But had to check it out so deleted a file :)
Ah, OK, take care my friend! :)
Accidental removal / deletion of external drive ./Trashes directory
