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Why when I delete something from external hard drive it goes to my Macs trash bin?

As above.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on May 18, 2022 10:16 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 18, 2022 10:31 AM

"The Trash" is complex illusion built from the combination of Trashes on each connected drive, sometimes including server drives and external drives as well.


MacOS is clever enough not to COPY files into a new folder to obtain this illusion, but generally just sets a few bits and adds the files to a list that indicate an item is "in the Trash" for that drive.


The advantage of this method is that you have one more chance to "Put Back" those items before they are deleted.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 18, 2022 10:31 AM in response to 1234x

"The Trash" is complex illusion built from the combination of Trashes on each connected drive, sometimes including server drives and external drives as well.


MacOS is clever enough not to COPY files into a new folder to obtain this illusion, but generally just sets a few bits and adds the files to a list that indicate an item is "in the Trash" for that drive.


The advantage of this method is that you have one more chance to "Put Back" those items before they are deleted.

Why when I delete something from external hard drive it goes to my Macs trash bin?

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