To avoid this unfortunate situation happening to you, back up your work often, as discussed in Chapter 23. Get your checkbook ready, as file recovery prices range from $100–$3000, depending on disk size, disk condition, and how quickly you need the files back. Check out and if you need help recovering files. The emphasis is there for a reason! Emptying the Trash normally means “bye-bye files.” To recover files that have been erased accidentally or prematurely (or to rescue files from disks that are damaged) you will need to call in a team of professionals. This will work only if putting the item in the Trash was the last thing you did (as the undo will only undo the last thing you did) and, most important, if you haven’t emptied the Trash yet. If you put a file in the Trash by accident, you can remove it from the Trash by using the Finder undo feature, pressing z-Z. The warning also does not appear if you press z-Shift-Option-Delete. If you find the Trash warning annoying, you can eliminate it by changing a setting in Finder Preferences, as described in Chapter 4. Figure 3-34 shows the warning.įigure 3-34: If you choose File Empty Trash or press z-Shift-Delete, the Finder confirms that you really want to empty the Trash. If you use the pop-up Dock menu, the Trash is emptied without warning. In the first two methods, the Finder displays a warning, asking if you really want to permanently delete the items that are in the Trash. Mac OS X keeps a separate Trash for each user.Įmpty the Trash by using one of the following methods:Ĭontrol-click the Trash icon (or click it and hold) and when the pop-up Dock menu appears, choose Empty Trash. If other people use your computer with different login accounts, you do not see items that they have moved to the Trash. When you view the Trash contents, you see only items that you have moved to the Trash since you last emptied it.
#REVERSE SECURE EMPTY TRASH MAC MAC OS X#
(As you observed in Chapter 3, the items you put on the Mac OS X desktop are actually located in the Desktop folder of your home folder.) You can remove items from the Trash by dragging them out of this Finder window and placing them in another folder or on the desktop. The Trash contents appear in a Finder window. You can see the contents of the Trash by clicking the Trash icon in the Dock. We’ll talk more about file organization in Chapter 5. If you think you want to trash something, but aren’t sure yet, store the files somewhere else. Not only will the trash file get bloated storing all the unwanted garbage, it’s also very easy to accidentally empty the trash when trying to send an item to the trash (especially with the keyboard shortcut, it’s only a Shift key’s difference). Do not get in the habit storing items in the Trash. A click or swish sound will be heard and your files will be deleted. In the Finder menu, select Empty Trash, or press z-Shift-Delete. To actually delete them, much like your kitchen trash pail, you have to take out the trash. The documents are not deleted yet though.
#REVERSE SECURE EMPTY TRASH MAC FULL#
Select the items and press z-Delete (which is the keyboard shortcut for choosing Finder Move to Trash).Ĭontrol-click an item, or select several items and Control-click one of them, and then choose Move To Trash from the contextual menu that appears.Īfter moving an item to the Trash, the Trash icon will change from an empty wire mesh basket to a basket full of crumpled up papers. Select the items and choose Finder Move To Trash. Move one or more items to the Trash by using one of the following four ways:ĭrag the items to the Trash icon in the Dock. Before emptying the Trash, you can still change your mind, open the Trash and remove items from it. First, you need to move them to the Trash and then you need to empty the Trash. Deleting files and folders is a two-step process. This is the Trash, the receptacle into which you place items you want to be rid of. At the opposite end of the Dock from the Finder icon, you see an icon resembling a wire-mesh wastepaper basket.