Why does it take hours to empty the trash on my Mac?

Question

Why does it take hours to empty the trash on my Mac?

My harddisks are getting full and it lasts hours to move files into the trash (I guess that this is done sequentially). So first I asked the system to empty the trash securely. And in the trash were 3 big files (.mov movies with 7GB each).

The activity monitor shows that the CPU is working full speed (2008 MacMini with Core 2 Duo Processor.

What happens? What can I do to speed up things?

Any help appreciated

Ueli

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Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.7.2), Creative WebCam, iPad 1, etc

Posted on Dec 27, 2011 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jan 2, 2012 3:45 PM in response to Ueli Schrader

Select Apple menu > Force Quit... from the menu bar, then select Finder and press return. From the Finder menu bar, select Finder > Preferences > Advanced and uncheck the box labeled "Empty Trash securely." Try again to empty the Trash. If you still have problems, read this support article:

You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

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Answer 2

Jan 2, 2012 3:45 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for the tip. It worked.

Nevertheless I need more space on my hard disks to get "wild hogs", "jumpin Jack Flash" etc. into my iTunes library.

Happy New Year to you all and especially to you, Linc Davis.

Ueli

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