Trash & Time Machine

[jcan]

Hello all,

I have a question which may sound naive, but it really bothers me: Since I am using Time Machine which keeps regular and thorough backups of my Macintosh HD, what is the purpose of the Trash? I mean, Trash occupies a lot of space of my disk, and as I understand it, its role is duplicated (in a superior way) by TM, right? Should I therefore disable Trash, or keep its size to a minimum (although I do not know how to do that)?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

The trash is a place to store documents and files you no longer need, such as disk images of downloaded software that you've already installed and no longer have any need for the disk image itself.

When a file is placed in the Trash, it stays there, and still occupies space on the hard drive. To completely erase the file and recover the disk space used by the file, you would simply empty the trash (much like you would with a real trash can -- throw stuff in it that you no longer need, then empty the trash can at the end of the week, or daily, or whatever). This is good because you may "trash" a file you think you no longer need, then decide tomorrow that you DO need it -- and you can easily pull it out of the trash (if you have not emptied the trash yet) and do what you will with it.

Time Machine does not duplicate functionality of the trash. Time Machine is for backing up files every hour, and compiling a historical record of the files that have been on your computer for some length of time. Where Time Machine excels and the trash fails is in Time Machine's ability to be used as a method to "go back" several revisions of a file -- if you have a Word document that you continually add items to over the course of several months, Time Machine would be a good method to "go back in time" and recover some change you made to the document yesterday... or last week... or last month. This is impossible to do with the trash.

Time Machine is not related to, nor does it duplicate the functionality of the trash.