How to permanently delete photos from iPhoto and Mac

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How to permanently delete photos from iPhoto and Mac

Version OSX 10.9.5

I backed up all photos to my external hard drive and now I'd like to remove them permanently from my MacBook and clear up the 36G of space they are taking up.

Went into iPhoto, selected all photos and deleted them

Went into iPhoto>Trash and emptied it

Went to the System Trash and deleted the photos there

Found a copy of my iPhoto Library via Finder and deleted it.

Yet, somehow, the space has not cleared up on my Hard Drive. It still has exactly the same amount of available space as before I did all of that deleting and trash emptying. I have spent approx the past hour searching through forums on the internet, but have not found a solution that works.

Can anybody help me? Thank you in advance.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Aug 3, 2015 3:52 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 3, 2015 3:54 PM in response to ajmc87

Did you restart the Mac after doing all of that? Just a thought....

Cheers,

GB

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Answer 2

ajmc87 Author

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Aug 3, 2015 4:04 PM in response to gail from maine

I did restart the computer, but still had the same result.

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

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Aug 3, 2015 4:22 PM in response to ajmc87

If you deleted the Library from the Finder then the Photos are gone, and perhaps you need to reindex the drive with spotlight to get a better report. Either that or you have a duplicate library on there.

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Answer 4

ajmc87 Author

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Aug 3, 2015 4:34 PM in response to Yer_Man

I've searched for duplicates via the Search function, but didn't find any. Could they be under a different name?

I've also searched for "File Type" > "Images" and yet there are only a handful of results, and not the 7k photos that I supposedly deleted.

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Answer 5

ajmc87 Author

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Aug 3, 2015 5:05 PM in response to ajmc87

I went ahead and re-indexed the hard drive, but it still does not reflect a reduction in hard drive space.

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Answer 6

Yer_Man

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Aug 3, 2015 11:58 PM in response to ajmc87

I've also searched for "File Type" > "Images" and yet there are only a handful of results, and not the 7k photos that I supposedly deleted.

So one search tells you one thing, and another tells you the opposite. Sound very much like an issue with Spotlight and not iPhoto. I'd ask on the forum for whatever version of the OS you have, Mention the two searches and their different results.

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