OS X :: Item XYZ Can't Be Moved To The Trash Because It Can't Be Deleted?
Mar 27, 2010
I bought me a brand new iMac. I freaking love this thing, don't know why I didn't make the jump (back) sooner. Anywho, I have two external hard drives in which I used to transfer data, including some pictures and audio from my Windows Vista computer to the new Mac. I go ahead and finish transferring over the files. When I go to delete the files off my external hard drive, I am met with a "the item (insert file name here) can't be moved to the trash because it can't be deleted". Now, I notice that this happens with ANY file or folder that I attempt to move to the trash can from either of my external hard drives. I can't seem to find a solutions anywhere either via a Google search or on this forum.
Recently (past 3 days) this thing has been in my trash, no matter how many times I empty the trash or delete it from there individually it always comes back.
My problem is that I can't drag a file to the trash. When I try to delete a file by right-clicking and choose "move to trash" I get a message telling me that the item will be deleted permanently and that I cannot undo this action. In other words it is possible to delete a file permanently, but I would like to have the option to move them to the trash first. I have recently tried to partition the internal hard-drive using Boot Camp, however unsuccessfully. I don't know if the two are related. I have Macbook 13,3" early 2010 with the latest version of Snow Leopard, 10.6.4.
I move a file to Trash or use the delete command a pop message comes up "This item will be deleted immediately. You can?t undo this action" - 'Show warning' is not selected in finder preferences. I have a nine day old 27" gi7 imac where I copied all the settings from my macbook pro via time machine. Both machines were on 10.6.2 and I am the only user - this problem only surfaced today. I ran Repair Disk Permissions with no luck and called Apple?.. they said that the only way to get rid of this was to perform a clean install making sure to back-up everything. I said that that was crazy and would involve me in having to invest in a new HD as I've already filled the imac with 500gb of stuff that has now been wiped over and I don't have a spare 500 gigs kicking around.
I have a MacPro (Intel), and I had my Music folder on a second (non-boot) internal drive. That drive was getting full, so I bought yet another internal drive to put in one of the other bays, thinking to copy the folders to the new, larger-capacity drive. So I bought a 2 Tb drive and transferred all my MOVIES to the new drive, but then went back and deleted my MUSIC folder and emptied the trash. I knew immediately that I'd made a mistake.
I haven't written anything to that drive whatsoever from that moment on, so absolutely nothing should have been over-written. I have plenty of room on the new drive to which I can recover the deleted files. Unfortunately the folder/directory was very large, with over 20,000 files, mostly of podcasts/spoken word stuff, much of which is no longer available or would represent thousands of hours of download time, plus all my digitized folk music from long out-of-print LP records.
You'd think I'd be more responsible with >600 Gb of data! However, fortunately the drive is in good working order, it just requires a good recovery strategy. I know that services that do recovery charge a fortune, and because I haven't written anything to that drive and it still mounts without problems, I'm hoping I can do this myself with a good data recovery software package. Because I am talking about literally thousands of files, it is just too painful to think about editing all the metadata about each file (name, artist, album, etc.), and ideally I would like to recover the files and the file structure so podcasts are recovered as such, etc.
Is this at all possible?
If so, what are the relative merits of File Salvage vs. Data Rescue vs. Kernel for Macintosh (Nucleus Data Recovery) vs. VirtualLab Data Recovery vs. Stellar Phoenix? Is there something better than these--these are the only ones I found on a Web search. Are there any head-to-head reviews of which someone is aware?
I put a lot of things in the trash which I didn't mean to. I have not emptied the trash. How can I restore them to exactly the folders they all came from? On Windows, there is an option "Restore" which does this.
Anyone know if this can be done (remove a directory in trash)? I've tried going into Terminal and using rmdir and dragging the folder I want deleted to Terminal, but it says the folder is not empty, and doesn't delete it. Using rm and dragging deletes other than folders, but how to do this for folders escapes me (unless I go and delete all the contents, which would be a PITA).
I used to have a Macbook, but after two years the hard drive crash, I now have a pro. After getting the files that I needed back I went into my external hard drive that my old macbook backed up onto and tried to delete all of the old back ups so I could make room for my new computer to use. After deleting it one file is left in my trash can. It is an old back up from August and the file name ends with .inProgress.
I assume that I must have disconnected my computer or something while it was backing up, but now when I try to clear the trash it says "The operation can't be completed because the item "AGQ0qILU99QsKv" is in use." I have no idea what that item is, where it is because it doesnt show in the trash, or how to get rid of it. I have tried to secure empty trash and use a few terminal commands but nothing is working. Also it wont let me remove it from the trash. It just copies the file rather than moving it out.
When I select a message and press delete I get a warning saying:
The message ... could not be moved to the mailbox Deleted Messages POP Account
The destination mailbox Deleted Messages POP Account does not allow messages to be moved to it. I can drag a message to the 'On My Mac' folder and select delete and this removes the email - but seems wrong.
This is my first mac (first day), im used to a deleted message going to a bin which you choose to empty as and when.
I just found something on my desktop...it looks like an excel spreadsheet. It's labeled Dead9000. I know it isn't mine! I can't move it, can't open it, and can't delete it or send it to trash. Is this some kind of virus or something? What do I do?
My phone calls and it's my (pc-centric) friend Kasper. He's on msn with his girlfriend in Switzerland and she's panicking. She's just accidentally moved her desktop (including everything on it off course) to the trash. She's also trashed Skype (might have been on desktop?!?). And now she can't move it back out again!Unfortunately I'm not the master of Macs that Kasper hopes and I've no idea what to do about this except try to restart. To calm his girlfriend down I've told him to tell her that I'll be back in 30 min. with expert advice from Macrumors... So, what advice should I pass on to him to her?
For some reason, my .zip, .dmg and other archive files are being moved to my trash without my consent whenever they're decompressed. I do NOT want this to happen. How can I prevent this?
Suddenly, every file I put in the trash can is emptied immediately. This has never happened before, and I do not believe it is because of a setting somewhere that I changed. Any tips on how to prevent this?
I have a 500GB external harddrive that uses TM and have recently wanted to free up some space, so stupidly I manually moved a ton of the backups (I can't even imagine how many gigs) to the trash. The trash bin now can't even fathom the amount of space and literally doesn't empty itself (it goes to like 140,000 items to delete and just keeps going). So I read that you're not supposed to delete TM backups this way but now I'm kind of screwed because I can't move the files from the trash to the External again cause it takes too much time. What the hell am I supposed to do?
I cannot delete email the "normal" way. When I set up my POP account, it created a second trash folder with the same name as my mail account. There are thus two folders in my Trash can - "On My Mac" and the one named after my email account. When I try to delete any mail it says that I cannot move anything to the Trash folder for my Mail account. I have to DRAG all email I wish to delete to the "On My Mac" Trash folder? I just want to be able to click delete and have email go away! Why is this not working?
I'm trying to trash two things called MEMSTICK.IND and MSTK_PRO.IND. They have little locks by them and I can't drag them into the garbage. If I can get them into the garbage I can delete them but I can't get them into the trash. They were in there before but someone dragged them out.
The operation can't be completed because the item "Saint John of Las Vegas2009.avi" is in use. This is the message received trying to empty the trash. How can this be overcomes.
I have a file named "?'g???z" permanently present in the trash. It doesn't get deleted when emptying the trash but if I attempt to drag it out or 'get info' about it it disappears. However, if I then click on the now empty trash can it immediately reappears. So far I've tried this
I received a Mac Mini for my birthday from my husband. I've had my wonderful Mini for less than 2 weeks and am trying to get used to it after working with a MS/Dell system since the early 1990's. I accidentally deleted Bootcamp and now when I click on the bootcamp icon on my desktop I get the following error message: The alias "My Boot Camp" can't be opened because the original item can't be found. What do I need to do to reinstall/make this work again?
After performing a Time Machine restoration, the "Places" list in the Finder sidebar contains a folder icon that can not be selected or deleted. It does not appear on the list of places to show in Finder Preferences, so there is nothing to uncheck. How do I get rid of this erroneous icon?
Info: Mac Pro 2010 Hexacore 12GB SSD, Mac OS X (10.6.5), Logic 9.1.3
I somehow managed to do something really silly, I don't know how exactly I did it, but I had moved my desktop to the trash. So now it's sitting there in the trash. I don't dare do anything until I get some proper advice. Can I just drag it back to my home folder and clear the trash?
I just upgraded to SL. Now I got crazy on my Trash. Whenever and Whatever I drag a file, a movie, a pic, everything, it will not move the the trash. Instead system warms me "This item will be detect immediately, you can't undo this action." And the item is detect directly. I always have a empty trash.
I purposely deleted the Mail application from my Macbook. Went into Finder and moved the app icon to trash can. I thought this would do the trick, but now it randomly shows up on the toolbar but won't open. How do I get rid of this thing?
My IPhoto library accidentally got moved to the trash, I tried to drop it back into iphoto, but it will not go where it used to be. I moved it to my desktop, please, how do I get it back to normal.
I accidentally moved MS office 2011 to trash and cannot get it back... "put back" option is not in bold. Have read many threads to drag it to desktop, applications etc but am afraid to do this. should I just re-install the program as I have the disk? but my main concern: if I reinstall, will I lose existing files of Word, Excel, PP? I see them now converted to I-Works, will they remain? BTW - I have not backed up on time machine in over 2 months!
Today, I am not able to delete messages, I get this; The message "message name here" could not be moved to the mailbox "Trash On My Mac" The operation couldn't be completed. File exists.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 27 inch core i7, 1TBHD, 4GB Ram
