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Deleting hidden files in external drive

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

Posted on Jul 15, 2022 1:50 AM

Reply
7 replies

Jul 15, 2022 6:59 AM in response to Ruth.mg

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.

Deleting hidden files in external drive

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