How To Stop "Emptying Trash"?

Question

Level 1

14 points

How To Stop "Emptying Trash"?

I am using the very latest Mountain Lion OS-X (10.8.3) on the latest MacBook Pro 15" Retina with 768GB drive and 16GB of ram.

I deleted several gigabytes worth of files on my USB External Hard disk that is connected to my MacBook Pro Retina computer. When you look at the small window saying the progress of the deletion s, it shows how many hours remain, how many files remain, and a progress bar. On the same line as the progress bar at the right-end, is an "x" that is supposedly used to stop the deletion process. THIS "FEATURE" DOES NOT WORK!!!

All I want is to delete the trash. The amount of time is still excessive - it's been two full days and only about half completed!

So, can anyone advise me how to stop this insanity and stop emptying trash that is in process?

Also, for future situations, how do we just empty trash immediately all at once?

Your help will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Larry

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), MY SECONDARY WIRELESS ROUTER

Posted on Apr 5, 2013 11:40 PM

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Answer 1

arthur

Level 5

5,254 points

Apr 6, 2013 4:39 AM in response to lwhamilton

Three ways to do this:

1. Open a terminal window (terminal is in Applications > utilities) and type (exactly like this): killall Finder

2. or go to activity monitor (also in utilities), search for finder in the search window at the top right, select the finder when it comes up, click on the stop sign in the upper left, and then Quit.

3. or do option-command-escape; the force quit applications window will come up. Scroll to the bottom of the list, select finder, and click on force quit.

I don't think you can "empty trash immediately all at once". Some things just take time. The only thing wrong with immediate gratificaton is: it takes to long.

But your trash emptying shouldn't take days to complete. Maybe it's hung up on something and when you force quit it it'll stop being hung up.

Or not. Maybe you will have to force empty the trash: maybe there's something it's having trouble deleting because of a permissions issue. So you could try this:

in the terminal, type: rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

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