Hi, I've moved files (by dragging) over to my external hard drive on my MacBook Pro, Nov 23, Apple M3, but they are still showing in Finder. I don't need them on my Mac anymore, but definitely want them on the hard drive. Any suggestions? Thank you
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.5
If you drag a file from your internal drive to an external drive, it is only copied, not moved. You can actually see this by the "+" icon that is displayed on top of the cursor as you are dragging the file.
So now, you have 2 copies of the files. You'd need to delete those from your internal drive (and empty the Trash to eventually recover the storage.) I would suggest to test the deletion with deleting only one file. I recently saw a discussion where the copy on the external drive was also deleted when the one on the internal drive was deleted. That seemed odd but you don't want to take a risk.
If you drag a file from your internal drive to an external drive, it is only copied, not moved. You can actually see this by the "+" icon that is displayed on top of the cursor as you are dragging the file.
So now, you have 2 copies of the files. You'd need to delete those from your internal drive (and empty the Trash to eventually recover the storage.) I would suggest to test the deletion with deleting only one file. I recently saw a discussion where the copy on the external drive was also deleted when the one on the internal drive was deleted. That seemed odd but you don't want to take a risk.
files moved to external hard drive still showing in finder - MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1 (23G93)
