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Secure Empty Trash not working

when I press secure empty trash : the items load up then when I press either of the options (locked or unlocked) it stays on screen for a few seconds then disappears ??

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jul 9, 2013 11:59 PM

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Posted on Jul 10, 2013 5:00 AM

Quit all apps (really quit from the menus), especially Preview.

Start Terminal and copy/paste

sudo rm -Rf ~/.Trash/*

hit enter

it asks for your password, type it and hit enter,

quit terminal.

Restart the iMac.

Should help

12 replies

Mar 26, 2015 10:28 PM in response to Praiano

Based on further information that I have found files are not securely deleted by the instructions originally given. I don't know if the command I'm about to give was available at the time that Lex gave their response but to securely remove files you must use the command "srm" not "rm" to perform a secure removal/deletion.


sudo srm -Rf ~/.Trash/*

Mar 26, 2015 11:01 PM in response to benichismo

If you still have files remaining after using that command one possibility is that there are locked files that even the super user (use of sudo) cannot delete. These files must be unlocked before they can be deleted. Please exercise caution with all commands that utilize "sudo" and wildcards, "*". Command to recursively unlock any remaining files is as follows:

sudo chflags -R nouchg ~/.Trash/*

After running the above command then again run the "srm" command and any files that were locked will now be removed.

Secure Empty Trash not working

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