Secure Empty Trash

As I was running out of space on my Macbook, and experiencing a severe slow-down in activity, I decided to do a major trashing of unwanted files. I then selected "secure empty trash" to clear Trash, This has been running for a day and a night already, and still has a while to go.
Is it usual for this process to take such a long time to complete?I am running OS X 10.9.4

Thanks
Mandav

No it is not usual. Try a reboot.

actually it is usually if the files where very large i had a 8.0 gb file from a idvd project that took maverick 3 days to remove out of trash using the secure trash option. when you have three of them thats when my mac pro took 5 days to empty trash there seems to be no way to secure empty faster with larger files i hope someone figures out a script it would be nice to have one

Since you said your MacBook was already running slow and because Secure Empty Trash overwrites the space you are erasing it can take quite a long time. As harry said try a reboot. If there are still items left in the Trash you can start the process again.
Really it's not necessary to Secure Empty Trash unless you are talking about sensitive documents and security is an issue. A normal Erase makes the space available to be rewritten which can happen quite quickly if you don't have much space (you need about 10% of your HD free). Secure Empty Trash zeros out the data (writes over the data with zeros), takes a long time but makes retrieval impossible. So unless you are a government emissary carrying top secret political documents overseas it's probably unnecessary.

Thanks for all your responses. The process eventually completed, but I was amazed and disappointed to note, on checking the space on my HD, that all the trashing I did freed up minimal space.

I then tried to track where all the space was being used, and, after adding up the various components, I could not reach anywhere close to the total shown as being in use. I found the major usage areas like Applications, Documents, Music, Movies, Videos and Pictures, but all these did not reach anywhere close to the total used space. Also ran utility to verify my HD, and nothing untoward showed up.

What am I missing out in my tallying up of HD space being used?

mandav said:

Thanks for all your responses. The process eventually completed, but I was amazed and disappointed to note, on checking the space on my HD, that all the trashing I did freed up minimal space.

I then tried to track where all the space was being used, and, after adding up the various components, I could not reach anywhere close to the total shown as being in use. I found the major usage areas like Applications, Documents, Music, Movies, Videos and Pictures, but all these did not reach anywhere close to the total used space. Also ran utility to verify my HD, and nothing untoward showed up.

What am I missing out in my tallying up of HD space being used?

Click to expand...

If you checked your memory (storage) via the Apple Menu > About this Mac > More Info > Storage, then like me you will see a Bar which shows total memory for Audio, Movies, Photos ect and another classification called Other. In my case this shows 50Gb.
This is a much better way of checking memory storage as apposed to Getting Info on each folder.
You can also use Disc Utility to Erase Free Space on your Mac HD a good way to permanently get rid of deleted/trashed items. Select Mac HD in Disc Utility, click erase and click Erase Free Space.

mandav said:

Thanks for all your responses. The process eventually completed, but I was amazed and disappointed to note, on checking the space on my HD, that all the trashing I did freed up minimal space.

I then tried to track where all the space was being used, and, after adding up the various components, I could not reach anywhere close to the total shown as being in use. I found the major usage areas like Applications, Documents, Music, Movies, Videos and Pictures, but all these did not reach anywhere close to the total used space. Also ran utility to verify my HD, and nothing untoward showed up.

What am I missing out in my tallying up of HD space being used?

Click to expand...

Try using an application like GrandPerspective and have a look, especially for huge large files.

One that can happen is a Time Machine backup that can create a backup on the boot drive, or any large invisible files or folders that aren't needed.

GrandPerspective for Mac | MacUpdate

Checking HDD Usage

Rod Sprague said:

If you checked your memory (storage) via the Apple Menu > About this Mac > More Info > Storage, then like me you will see a Bar which shows total memory for Audio, Movies, Photos ect and another classification called Other. In my case this shows 50Gb.
This is a much better way of checking memory storage as apposed to Getting Info on each folder.
You can also use Disc Utility to Erase Free Space on your Mac HD a good way to permanently get rid of deleted/trashed items. Select Mac HD in Disc Utility, click erase and click Erase Free Space.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip Rod. I had a look, and found the breakdown of my usage. But 2 things stand out
1. The item "Other" which accounts for over 58 GB of my total HDD of 159GB. It would be helpful to get a breakdown of this item to see what I could still trash. Can't imagine what, of any size, could be included in Other. The only large section not accounted for is Documents which is currently 20.5 GB, which still leaves an unidentified amount of over 38 GB??

2. The item "Backups" using 15.33 GB - can't think what this represents as I do all my backing up on an external drive. Would be great to be able to clear this item?

Any further thoughts?

Make sure you are not doing Time Machine backups on your HD. As for "other" it will be comprised of pref files, library files related to apps the list goes on and on. If you have a well used mac you will have accumulated Gb's of data some of which will be language files and stuff you no longer need. Despite the opinions of some people on this forum I have found Clean My Mac 2 very good at removing these unnecessary files. I have used it for 5years and never had a problem. On first run it got rid of 74 Gb of unnecessary files. As usual the constant rule applies; make sure you have a complete backup first.

Must say that I get quite frustrated by these mysterious references in the Mac's usage reporting. I have checked backup preferences, and there is no provision for backing up on the HDD - all backups go to the external drive which I connect up for this purpose from time to time.
Have also done a search on the HDD, and can find no file or any trace of anything constituting "backup", and yet the usage report refers to 15.33 GB of backups

I'll have a look at the Clean my Mac software you suggested, but, of course this will still not explain the unaccounted usage

Thanks for your responses
Mandav

If you have TM turned ON, it will, by default, try to make a backup every hour. If the drive to which the backup is pointed is NOT available (as you say you disconnect it), then TM will make a "holding" backup on your main drive, waiting for the backup drive to reappear. When the backup drive is reconnected, TM will then complete the missed backup. I avoid this by leaving the TM backup connected and by turning OFF TM, then using a third party product called TimeMachineEditor to schedule a twice daily backup. TME activates TM at the scheduled time, makes the backup, then shuts down TM again when done.

You can do that manually, too, by turning OFF TM and then only turning it on to make a backup, then turn it OFF again. Doing things manually is much less reliable as the weak link in the backup chain is the human. Machines don't generally "forget" to do scheduled events.

mandav said:

Must say that I get quite frustrated by these mysterious references in the Mac's usage reporting. I have checked backup preferences, and there is no provision for backing up on the HDD - all backups go to the external drive which I connect up for this purpose from time to time.
Have also done a search on the HDD, and can find no file or any trace of anything constituting "backup", and yet the usage report refers to 15.33 GB of backups

I'll have a look at the Clean my Mac software you suggested, but, of course this will still not explain the unaccounted usage

Thanks for your responses
Mandav

Click to expand...

I don't know what you're using to find the large mysterious files/folders but Stoplight (aka Spotlight) doesn't usually work.

Use either GrandPerspective or Disk Inventory X for a visual view or just use some of the various options of Find Any File. i.e.: a search for files or folders over a certain size etc., and don't forget to include the show invisibles option.

Disk Inventory X for Mac | MacUpdate
Thomas Tempelmann - Find Any File
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30079/find-any-file

Personally I'd suggest that Find Any File is a must have application. It can find anything on your drive(s). ;D

Do you sync any portable devices, iPhone, iPad to your Mac? Backups can consist of backups of portable devices. There can be quite a few of these if you have never deleted the older backups.

Rod Sprague: Please, in future, do not use the terms "memory" and "storage" interchangeably. They are not the same thing at all, and you are sowing confusion.

RAM is memory.
Hard drive or SS drive space is storage.

chas_m said:

Rod Sprague: Please, in future, do not use the terms "memory" and "storage" interchangeably. They are not the same thing at all, and you are sowing confusion.

RAM is memory.
Hard drive or SS drive space is storage.

Click to expand...

Yes, I see your point. It was not my intention to imply that the two terms are interchangeable, rather, to show that "memory" as so often referred to by users as in, "How much memory does your phone have?" is in fact storage and the steps I described (Apple Menu > About this Mac > More Info > Storage) are quite clearly about identifying storage allocation.
None the less I concede and will be more careful in future not to mix metaphors with technical terms.
I would like to suggest however that a public thread is not the place to have this discussion, thats what PM's are for.