A few items are stuck in my trash

Question

A few items are stuck in my trash

A few items will not delete from my trash can. When this has happened before (many times in the 4 years I've owned this computer) just restarting the computer solved the problem; it would then delete. Not this time. This happened about 2 weeks ago.

I had just attached a new EHD and transferred all the files from the old EHD to the new one in batches, deleting stuff I no longer want along the way. The items stuck in the trash are items that had been on the old drive (which is still connected and being used by my family).

Every time I empty the Trash for the last 2 weeks I get this error message:

Lots of other things I've deleted in these 2 weeks have deleted, but these few items stick there. They are not locked. Of course they are not in use regardless of what the error message says. I googled the day it first happened and tried something in the DOS prompt suggested in that article (I don't remember what) and that didn't work.

Now I'm getting another error message when I try to empty the trash too:

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these unwanted items in my trash? It's kind of silly, maybe I could ignore them, but I've also been dealing with general sluggishness with my computer this month (see my last thread, posted a few minutes ago) and wonder if this could be part of it.

Thank you!

iMac, iOS 7.0.4

Posted on Dec 26, 2015 2:25 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Mar 13, 2016 11:58 AM in response to iphonemichele

Try rebooting the computer, then deleting the files or Emptying the Trash. Or you can visit Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on resolving Trash related issues.

Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on solving Trash issues. You can also try using Trash It! 5.1 to fix the problem. Or you can try this:

Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and paste the following at the prompt:

sudo rm -Rf ~/.Trash

Press RETURN. Enter your admin password when prompted. It will not echo to the screen. Press RETURN again.

(Should anyone tell you this is dangerous or unnecessary, please ignore the comment.)

You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

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Answer 2

Dec 26, 2015 2:42 PM in response to Kappy

I forgot to mention in my original post, I restart my computer at least once a day.

The terminal thing might be what I mentioned in my other post that I had read about and tried but it didn't work, but I will try it again and let you know how it goes.

Thank you!

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 26, 2015 5:45 PM in response to iphonemichele

Never use the shell (Terminal) to empty the Trash. It's dangerous and unnecessary, and it usually doesn't work, as you've already found.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.

Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

ls -@Oaen | pbcopy

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.

Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.

The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.

The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

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Answer 4

BettyG07

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2015 9:57 PM in response to iphonemichele

I needed to download an update to Office 2011. A .dmg file downloaded to my Downloads folder, and after i successfully installed the update I moved the .dmg file to the Trash. When I tried to empty the Trash, I got an error message just like your first one, iphonemichele. I was able to get rid of it by opening Trash and right-clicking on the .dmg file, then selecting "delete immediately" from the menu choices. Perhaps this will work for you...though I have no idea what an "error code -50" is (I tried googling it and got nowhere).

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Answer 5

Mar 13, 2016 12:25 PM in response to Kappy

So, I got busy when I originally posted this, and as it was more of an aesthetic annoying issue than a performance issue I was able to ignore it for a couple of months. Thank you to those who tried to help back then and to anyone who is willing to take on this challenge today. The stuck document saga continues:

Several weeks ago I noticed the storage space on my internal hard drive was approaching full and most of it was that stupid vague yellow Other category. (Why can't I get more detail about what that actually is?) I don't save anything except my applications and Lightroom database and backups on my internal drive so I was worried. I took it to my local Apple repair shop, their diagnosis was that I need a new internal drive, I said, Yay, that will take care of that pesky stuck item in the trash too.

Nope. When I was back home, at first, before I plugged in my 3 EHDs, the trash was indeed empty, BUT after plugging them all in, it returned. Also, even though the Apple tech removed a bunch of movies from my internal drive that I'd forgotten my daughter made, the Other category was still over 50% of the entire capacity of the drive. So I backed up everything I could think of to my EHDs, then took my Mac back and asked them to just do a clean re-install of El Capitan, no copying back old data.

Again, the trash can was empty at first, but (I should have seen this coming), after I plugged in my three EHDs, that very same XLS document that has been stuck in the trash for 3 months came back again. And I made it worse because one of my "bright" ideas was to try dragging it out of the trash to the desktop so I could delete it. Now I have a copy of it ALSO STUCK on the desktop. When I try to delete the copy on my desktop I get the same error message I've been getting when I've tried to delete it from the trash for the last 3 months: "The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)."

By the way, I have checked permissions in the Get Info dialogue box and the document is set to Read & Write for everyone.

First I tried Apple chat support but when they had me chatting on my phone in preparation for doing things on my Mac that required restarting and the connection was broken I decided to go to bed (it was 3 a.m. after all). But this morning, after some other searching, I remembered this thread, and the link to XLab that Kappy shared was clearer on the terminal solution, which I'd tried several times before to no avail, and my trash can is finally empty!

But only for the moment! It only worked after I unplugged my EHDs. I've got it narrowed down to 2 of the drives being the culprit because I had plugged in one of the drives immediately after bringing home my Mac from its first trip to the repair shop, and the trash remained empty until I plugged in the other two drives the next day. So as I type this, all 3 drives are still unplugged.

So now I'm hoping someone can tell me ...

1. How can I delete the stuck copy of the document from my desktop?

and

2. What to do about plugging my EHDs back in, so I can prevent this item from returning to the trash can? I have to plug them back in eventually, especially the one I routinely use daily (which is one of the suspects, the new one I bought in mid-November, although it's probably the other little one containing some items my husband asked me to back up, because the stuck file is one of his work files; though it could have been backed up on my older EHD that I was using before I bought the new one. Sorry if that is confusing! I can explain better if it would be helpful to understand which EHD is which.)

Thank you! I know this is terribly long, but my computer problems always seem stupidly complicated.

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Answer 6

Mar 13, 2016 4:45 PM in response to iphonemichele

Another update.

I plugged in my EHDs one at a time, a few times, and to my surprise it is the 2Tb drive, which is the one I thought it couldn't be, because I had plugged it in that first night and the trash didn't show up. But it's definitely the only one that, when plugged in, makes that stuck document reappear in my Trash bin.

And in a twist in this stupid saga, now the item is not staying in the trash. It only appears if my 2Tb drive is plugged in. I can't actually see the stuck document on that EHD of course. But I wonder if I could transfer the data from my 2Tb drive to my 5Tb drive, then reformat the 2Tb drive. Would that obliterate this darn stuck document?

And remember there's still a copy of the darn stuck document on my desktop. Will it disappear if I reformat the 2Tb EHD? Or allow me to finally delete it?

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