CAN'T TAKE OUT THE TRASH

Question

Level 1

4 points

CAN'T TAKE OUT THE TRASH

Recently, while hoping to open up some space on my external drive, I did something really dumb and dragged about 50 or 60 old Time-Machine back ups directly to the trash on my desktop. Well, after choosing “empty,” I discovered that this could take DAYS to achieve. I tried using “Clean My Mac” to erase all of the debris, but this seemed to take just as long simply to calculate the size of the job. I ejected my external drive and then restarted it, but all of the files jumped back into the trash. I restarted everything - no good. Finally, I tried to erase and reformat the drive, but an error message came up, so that didn’t work either. At this point, I'm just about ready to drop $100 and buy a new drive. Almost. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on this, I would greatly appreciate it...

Mac Studio (2022)

Posted on Jun 11, 2023 5:55 PM

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Answer 1

Mac Jim ID

Level 7

30,755 points

Jun 11, 2023 6:09 PM in response to azbeef

There are 2 things that should not be done:

Never use CleanMyMac
Never delete Time Machine backups manually

You would want to remove the HD from TM backups, then erase the drive. As for CleanMyMac, I recommend removing it by using the uninstaller. Even then it is likely it will not remove all files, as this program is borderline Malware, and will no doubt give you more trouble. For reference on removing the Time Machine files from you trash, check out this thread from the support community.

Deleting Time Machine Backups - Apple Community

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Answer 2

azbeef Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 11, 2023 6:14 PM in response to Mac Jim ID

Wow-I never realized that Clean My Mac had such a bad rep, but thanks for the info. And thanks for explaining the process of getting rid of all this junk in my trash. I'll try and wipe the drive after removing it from back-ups.

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Answer 3

Mac Jim ID

Level 7

30,755 points

Jun 11, 2023 6:40 PM in response to azbeef

No Problem, glad you got it erased. I was about to recommend booting into safe mode, but good to know a simple reboot allowed you to erase it.

As for CleanMyMac, feel free to search these forums. I would not have known it caused so many problems either until so many people reported problems here after using it. I, along with many others, have helped resolve their issues after using it and helped them remove it. It does not like to go away on it own and sometimes requires manual deletion of some files it installs in the system.

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Answer 4

dialabrain

Level 10

127,589 points

Jun 11, 2023 6:51 PM in response to azbeef

FWIW, the problem with CleanMyMac and all apps that claim to clean and maintain your Mac automatically is because they can remove things and change things they shouldn't due to programming flaws and errors.

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