#Force empty trash terminal usb boot mac os x#
Confirm Trash is working as intended again by emptying it as usual in the Mac OS X FinderĪdvanced users only: shorter syntax version to Trash stuck Time Machine backupsĪ much shorter version of the above process can be achieved by eliminating some of the safeguards used in the above steps.Let the Terminal sit and do it’s thing, there is no visible activity but typically that files will be removed within 2-15 minutes at most, exit out of Terminal when finished.
#Force empty trash terminal usb boot password#
The rm command does not ask for confirmation, it simply deletes files.Įnter the administrator password when requested to begin deleting the. Be sure to have the correct syntax in use here otherwise you may accidentally delete something you do not want. Trashes/501/ to be as verbose as possible with the intention on reducing errors with rm command. If you do not find the 501/ directory, just delete the contents of. Trashes contains the backupdb files directly as well. Note: Under some circumstances, the 501 folder will not exist, or it will be named something else. You can double-check you’re in the right place with sudo ls: Trashes/ folder, this will usually reveal a ‘501’ subfolder, which contains the stubborn Backups.backupdb files. Confirm you’re in the proper location by listing the contents of the.Open Terminal, found within /Applications/Utilities/ and then enter the following command to change the active directory to that of the Time Machine backup drive:Ĭd /Volumes/(backup drive name)/.Trashes/įor example to change directory to a backup drive named “Mac Backups” the command would be:.Connect the Time Machine drive to the Mac and (temporarily) stop any existing Time Machine backups.Proceed at your own risk.īe sure to issue commands precisely otherwise you may unintentionally delete files you do not want to remove, this is very important because the Terminal does not prompt you for approval or confirmation, it simply deletes everything. If you don’t know what you’re doing or are not comfortable with Terminal you may want to skip this entirely and just wait out the incredibly lengthy Trash deletion through Finder instead. This requires the use of force delete through the Terminal, which makes it a bit more advanced. Manually Empty Trash when Time Machine Backup Files are Stuck OK enough discussion of the problem and some background, let’s get to the solution so that you can empty the Trash can again and remove those old stubborn Time Machine backups once and for all. This issue was was supposedly resolved in a past Mac OS X update, but nonetheless it continues on in Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Sierra, El Capitan, etc, perhaps because the files that are causing the problem are often much older, typically from Mac OS X Lion and before. This is obviously a quirk or bug, and it seems to happen either when someone attempts to manually remove backups to create extra space on a hard drive, or when an ancient backup gets corrupted when Time Machine is attempting to perform housekeeping.
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