.mobilebackups.trash not deleting automatically

After a month of working on this problem, here’s a summary of my experience:

Bottom line: No one can explain why the folder .MobileBackups.trash grew to consume a quarter of my hard drive. I had no trouble in the first 2 1/2 years I owned the computer. Why did it start getting bloated 6 months ago? No one knows. (I have gotten considerable help from Apple Support.)

My problem: 6 months ago I had about 50 gb of free space on my hard drive. A month ago I was down to 18 gb free. It seemed that every time I opened my computer, the free space was down another gigabyte. I had no idea why.

To find the size of hidden folders:

• Download Omni Disk Sweeper (ODS). https://www.omnigroup.com/more/ (It’s free. Do not buy any apps described as “disk cleaners.” They only delete caches, etc; they do not allow you to see hidden files.)
• After ODS is installed, open the Terminal utility (MacintoshHD>Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app)
• Enter the command: security execute-with-privileges /A*/OmniDiskSweeper.app/*/M*/* 2>&-

It will give you a list of all folders, including hidden folders, and their sizes. I discovered that the folder .MobileBackups.trash was taking up a quarter of my hard drive. .MobileBackups itself was a reasonable size, but the trash was out of control.

Mobile backups (or local backups, or local snapshots) are a useful function of TimeMachine. They allow you to recover a previous version of a file you worked on a little bit ago, in between TimeMachine backups. Of course, it stops being useful when its trash doesn’t empty.

To DISABLE local snapshots:

• Open the Terminal utility (MacintoshHD>Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app)
• Enter the command: sudo tmutil disablelocal

To ENABLE local snapshots, open Terminal and enter the command: sudo tmutil enablelocal

Also, if you turn TimeMachine off and then back on again (MacintoshHD>Applications>System Preferences.app>TimeMachine), local snapshots will again be enabled.

There is a post about local snapshots at: http://www.howtogeek.com/212207/how-to-free-up-space-used-by-time-machines-local -backups-on-your-mac/

After you turn off local snapshots, I recommend that you wait a month (or more?). The folders are programmed to delete themselves. Maybe they will go away on their own. I don’t know whether waiting works. But the method outlined below for getting rid of .MobileBackups.trash will leave (empty) folders that cannot be deleted.

If you really want to delete .MobileBackups.trash immediately:

• Open the Terminal untility (MacintoshHD>Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app)
• Enter the command: sudo mv /.MobileBackups.trash /Trashme
• A folder called Trashme will be in the MacintoshHD folder. Drag the Trashme folder to Trash.
• Empty the Trash. There will be many locked folders that are “in use” and cannot be deleted.

The contents of the folders will be deleted. But there will be folders left that cannot be deleted. Ever.

I have tried numerous suggested commands from Apple Support staff and from Linc Davis here on the user support pages. Nothing worked.

The final suggestion from Apple is to erase OS-X. Then Apple Support would help me “manually bring your data back onto the computer, test the issue and if all works well, then migrate your applications back onto the computer.”

I am not going to go through that certainly laborious process. I have parked the Trashme folder (zero k, but cannot be deleted) in the MacintoshHD folder so I don’t have to look at it.

I hope that Apple Support will figure out why .MobileBackups.trash got so big in the first place.

Linc, I've used your method successfully in the past to delete stuck \mobilebackups\trash folders. But I am on El Capitan now so I used the earlier technique to put Trashme in the trash. I then disabled SIP per your instructions, emptied Trash and reenabled SIP. This all appeared to go fine with my Trash appearing empty. But the space on my HD didn't go down. I used DaisyDisk to find Trashme still lurking in (I think) \MobileBackups.trash\computer\2016-02-14-173129\volume\users\Ralph\.Trash\Trash me. It's clearly under a folder that was established at the time this afternoon when I attempted to create and empty the Trashme file. Do you know how I can get rid of the Trashme file now? thanks, Ralph Daily

Hi, MarkLUK.

Do you solve your problem? I have the same problem.

No. I made a backup to another 2Tb drive and started Time Machine from fresh.

I had exactly this problem... Spent hours trying to get to the bottom of it. Thanks in particular Linc Davis for the comments.

I wanted to follow up because I was in exactly the same spot as Sue Ellingson, but then figured out how to get rid of the Trashme file.

I opened Trashme, and changed it's sharing and permissions to read and write. This allowed me to navigate into the folder structure. At the end of the folder chain was a file from a backup of the CrashPlan app that I previously had installed on my computer and that must have been backed up as part of the TM backup.

I contacted CrashPlan for further help and they gave me these instructions.

1. As an administrative user, open a terminal. **Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app**

2. Cut and paste the following command into the terminal window: `sudo chflags noschg,nouchg `

3. Drag CrashPlan.app into the terminal window. It should populate the command to look something like this (*note the space between what you copied before and the path)*: `sudo chflags noschg,nouchg /Applications/CrashPlan.app` Your path may be different depending on where it was installed.

5. Press **Enter**. You will probably need to enter your password.

6. CrashPlan.app should be unlocked and you can move it to the trash

It could be very well that CrashPlan is not the culprit in all cases... but I suspect these instructions will work in most cases.

It leads me to wonder if CrashPlan was the initial issue in all of this. Perhaps TM wasn't cleaning up it's local files because of the issue with CrashPlan? The Crashplan people did tell me that they recommended against running TM and Crashplan at the same time.

Anyways, I found the above info to be super helpful. I hope what I wrote will help people in situations like Sue's.