MacOS – Interrupted Finder whilst it was deleting 400GB of files. Now I have 400GB of Hidden Space that won’t go away

findermacostrash

I was in the process of deleting 400GB of files from the Trash when I needed to restart Finder.

The Trash emptying progress bar was about 1/3rd of the way through.

Now DaisyDisk tells me I have 400GB of Hidden Space on a 1TB SSD.

I've restarted, waited a few days, and the space has not become available again.

Is there anything else I can do to reclaim this space?

Many thanks

Best Answer

Maybe it would help if you force-delete any remaining files from the .Trash folder using the terminal. I found this site to have a useful step-by-step tutorial of how it is done:

https://www.imore.com/how-force-empty-trash-your-mac-using-terminal

Related Solutions

Unaccessible folder in Trash

Try running this command:

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

It will prompt you for administrator credentials. This should force the removal of all files in the trash. Good luck!

If this doesn't work, try booting into Single User mode and doing the following:

Run unmount -uw /
Run rm -rfv /Users/~/.Trash/* (but replace ~ with your username). Note: I added the verbose switch so you'll be able to see what it gets stuck on if it still gets stuck.
If it still gets stuck, notate the file that it hangs on and report back.

Can’t empty the trash after deleting user account

You could try deleting it from the command line (Terminal).

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/

Be careful with this one though. This can't be undone if you punch that in wrong.

Best Answer

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Unaccessible folder in Trash

Can’t empty the trash after deleting user account

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