Can't empty trash on removable volume

H

havic

Windsurfer Nerd
I have 250 files in the trash folder on my external firewire drive, but I can't get rid of them because they are all locked.

My trash on my desktop might be empty, but when I plug in the external, it suddenly fills up with all the files in the external HDs trash.

How do I mass-unlock/delete them?
 
You can try emptying the trash while holding down the option key... I believe this forces even locked files to be deleted.
 
No it still says I do not have sufficient priveledges.

I can fix that by logging in as root I would imagine?

Something to worry over though: there was 110,000 files to be deleted in the trash. I'm not sure that it isnt just emptying the ENTIRE hard-drive, not just the trash, however I suppose that could be right. We have lost almost 40GB to those files that wont delete.
 
you may want to just change the privileges of the files, either with terminal or in the finder.
 
It was already on "Ignore ownership on this volume".

What is a Secure Empty?

I'll try that link to, but not till later, I have some design homework to get done first.
 
How about verify and repair permissions on the external drive? (with Disk Utility)
 
Try this:
  1. Open Terminal.
  2. Type man rm so you know exactly what you're about to do.
  3. After you've read the man files, and you're back at the command prompt, type sudo rm -f (leave a space, and don't push return).
  4. Open the Trash, push Cmd-A (select all), and drag to the Terminal window.
  5. Switch back to Terminal and push return.
  6. Enter your admin password and you're done.
Hopefully you don't hose your entire system because you had crucial stuff in the trash... I'd actually go through the Trash before doing this if I were you.
 
Secure Empty Trash makes deleted files unrecoverable by writing random data over the parts of the disks where the files were. Normal emptying the trash doesn't do this -- it simply marks the places on the disk where the files were as usable space, so when another file gets written to the disk it can be written over the deleted files' old space.

I don't think a secure empty trash is going to help you -- it's still going to tell you the items are locked.

Try this little utility:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12657

Drag your files out of the trash into a folder on the desktop. Then use this utility. Then try and delete them.
 
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