how to force empty trash on mac external drives

It is important to note that once items have been deleted from the Trash, there is no way to recover them except with the help of professional data recovery software. If you are particularly concerned about security, you can make items deleted from the trash absolutely un-recoverable by choosing “Trash -> Selecting a file -> Delete Immediately”. But remember, doing so will also force files that are locked to be deleted.

However, if you’re absolutely certain you won’t need any of the files from Trash you may ignore the warning, or hold down the Option key while choosing “Empty Trash” to omit the display of any warning. Typically when you do that, a warning dialog appears reminding you to restore any files you may need. If you wish to manually empty the Trash, all you need to do is go to Finder and choose the “Empty Trash” option. Whether it is files or app icons, this technique works for everything.

The Trash can be found at the right-hand end of the Dock and deleting / restoring files from it is a drag-and-drop operation, as already stated. After the retention period of 30 days expires, the Trash is auto-emptied which is when the deleted data is removed permanently. Deleted files are retained within the Trash for a period of 30 days within which, users can restore desired files by simply dragging and dropping on the desktop. Mac Trash is the folder where files deleted from the Finder go to. That’s the thought which gave birth to the Mac Trash folder. Thus, there should be a designated space on the hard drive that stores such deleted files for some time and allow users to restore them if needed. It’s a widely accepted universal fact that Mac users sometimes inadvertently delete files to hurriedly free up disk space only to later realize they still need some of them.

How to force empty trash on mac external drives