Hello everyone!
My external hard disk (SanDisk 1TB) has some hidden files in the trash and I cannot delete them "The operation can't be completed because the item "x" is in use". I unhidden them to delete directly from the disk, but nothing. The trash isn't empty. I renamed them, but it didn't work.
Any successful idea to be implemented? I have checked a few entries but none has helped me.
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)
MacOS High Sierra
The .trashes is an alias to the actual Trash folder on that drive. If you open it, you may be able to remove the individual items in the trash, but not .trashes itself, which is system reserved.
In other words, attack the individual items in the Trash, rather than the system folder that holds them.
Hi there, thanks for your answer. Unfortunately, they never stopped being busy, since I Turn off and off the laptop, ejected the hard disk, restart and nothing seems to work. And yea, the files are hidden in the .Trash folder created in the external disk
The three items shown as invisible are MacOS internal items, reserved by MacOS. You can not delete them using any ordinary means. and if you did, they will likely be re-created in a few minutes. In general, these files are very small, except for the spotlight-V100 file, which is a permuted index of all the words in all your files.
You can control whether the Spotlight-V100 file is created or not by EXCLUDING the indexing of this volume using
system preferences > spotlight > Privacy ...
... add that volume to the list of directories to be excluded, and it will not be indexed in the future.
from you description, it sounds like the issue is that the files are BUSY, not that they are invisible.
Most files become un-busy after a restart.
Hi Grant, thanks again. However, I wish to eliminate the trash folder - that’s actually the main reason of all. Any idea?
Hi again, I’ve tried but it doesn’t work, or trying to empty the Mac trash not trying to remove the inside folders - which are empty
if these are not taking up a lot of space, you may be anguishing over next-to-nothing
Deleting hidden files in external drive
