What is the Recycle Bin

Question

Level 1

4 points

What is the Recycle Bin

The 'About this Mac' Storage tab on my iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012) shows that the 1TB hard disk has on 50 GB left of free space. An evaluation of all the folders showed that only about half the disc is occupied. I subsequently purchased Daisy Disk and ran a scan. This found over 300 GB was used by an area called 'recycle bin'. The files have exeptionally long names of numerals only and nearly all seem to be the same size 536.9 MB each..

What is this area? Is is safe to delete the files to free up some space?

Alan Jackson

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Dec 3, 2015 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 3, 2015 9:23 AM in response to Susiesdad

Empty your trash can. You can do this by right clicking on the trash can icon on your desktop/dock and clicking Empty Trash. Let me know if this freed up the space you were looking for.

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Answer 2

Susiesdad Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2015 9:39 AM in response to sebster101

I had already reduced the trash which was very full going back to when I purchased the iMac by permanently deleting everything except recent trash. The Daisy Disk scan displays the existing Trash as a seperate area of only 48.3 GB

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Answer 3

Dec 3, 2015 9:43 AM in response to Susiesdad

Ok, in this case you shouldn't run into any issues deleting those files to free up space, however as with anything I would recommend making a backup of the computer before doing so as its a lot of files and you want to have a backup just in case something goes wrong!

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Answer 4

KiltedTim

Level 10

230,366 points

Dec 3, 2015 9:44 AM in response to Susiesdad

Then you have a folder somewhere on your Mac called "Recycle Bin" more than likely.

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Answer 5

Dec 3, 2015 9:51 AM in response to Susiesdad

Recycle Bin is something that is only used in Windows (or maybe some

Linux desktops). Did you migrate to this Mac from a Windows machine?

If that is the case, find and just delete the Recycle Bin as it is just trash.

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Answer 6

Susiesdad Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2015 9:59 AM in response to woodmeister50

No I did not migrate from a windows machine. The data hard disc from my windows machine is attached to the mac via a USB carrier that is only powered up when I need to retrieve old files. I do however have Windows 7 installed on a 50GB Bootcamp to run a photgraphic prog that is not available as a Mac App..

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Answer 7

Susiesdad Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2015 10:02 AM in response to KiltedTim

Not on the Macintosh HD.

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Answer 8

Dec 3, 2015 10:42 AM in response to Susiesdad

Empty the Recycle Bin in Windows.

Have a nice day.

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