How Long Should It Take to Move 343GB to the Trash?

[C(-)ris]

You can't(or shouldn't) delete the actual pictures folder. Just delete everything inside it.

[sekker]

Could be keeping snapshots.

[mrlynn]

C(-)ris wrote:
You can't(or shouldn't) delete the actual pictures folder. Just delete everything inside it.

That seems to be the message. But I can't 'move' it either, by copying to an external drive?

/Mr Lynn

[mrlynn]

sekker wrote:
Could be keeping snapshots.

??

/Mr Lynn

[Sarcany]

mrlynn wrote:
...But I can't 'move' it either, by copying to an external drive?

Yes, you can. You started off by saying that you'd copied it to your RAID. Did you see any errors when doing so?

sekker wrote:
Could be keeping snapshots.

1. Not in Sierra.

2. Would have nothing to do with moving files to the trash.

[mrlynn]

Sarcany wrote:
[quote=mrlynn]
...But I can't 'move' it either, by copying to an external drive?

Yes, you can. You started off by saying that you'd copied it to your RAID. Did you see any errors when doing so?

sekker wrote:
Could be keeping snapshots.

1. Not in Sierra.

2. Would have nothing to do with moving files to the trash.
No, I did not see any errors. The Pictures folder copied fine. But the OS won't let me delete the original folder on the HD labeled 'Pictures' after I have copied it. Is this just a Sierra quirk, or true of all OS variants?

For some reason it wouldn't tell me right away, and just left me thinking I was deleting the folder and contents when nothing was really happening. Maybe the notice was hiding behind the 'Moving to Trash' notice. . .

In the event, I have now simply moved the contents of that folder to the Trash and deleted them. Took just a few minutes!

I have also taken the precaution of renaming the 'Pictures' copy on the external RAID drive to 'Photos&Images'.

Now I've got over 500GB of free space on my 2TB Fusion drive (which was the point of this exercise). Just have to make sure my Time Machine backup is also including the external RAID.

/Mr Lynn

[RAMd®d]

No, I did not see any errors. The Pictures folder copied fine. But the OS won't let me delete the original folder on the HD labeled 'Pictures' after I have copied it. Is this just a Sierra quirk, or true of all OS variants?

No, it's nothing new.

It's deemed an integral part of the OS.

Look at the original folder and your copy.

The icons should be different.

When you copy one of those root (?) folders, you get a generic folder.

Maybe some terminal-fu could change all that, and build some kind of link to your external folder, or just make an alias to the external folder (if you haven't already) and ignore the OS folder.

[mrlynn]

RAMd®d wrote:
No, I did not see any errors. The Pictures folder copied fine. But the OS won't let me delete the original folder on the HD labeled 'Pictures' after I have copied it. Is this just a Sierra quirk, or true of all OS variants?

No, it's nothing new.

It's deemed an integral part of the OS.

Look at the original folder and your copy.

The icons should be different.

When you copy one of those root (?) folders, you get a generic folder.

Maybe some terminal-fu could change all that, and build some kind of link to your external folder, or just make an alias to the external folder (if you haven't already) and ignore the OS folder.

Thanks, RAMd®d, for the explanation. I really haven't kept up with the ins-and-outs of OS X, though I started back with 10.4. Funny thing: I rarely look at the Icon View, preferring the Column View (I was a long-time user of Greg's Browser, back in the OS 8 and 9 era), so I didn't notice the change in the icon.

I could use some terminal-fu, to be sure. You know, DOS soured me on command-line interfaces, and I never got over it. The Macintosh graphical interface (System 6 when I discovered it) was a revelation: I could see what was going on!

/Mr Lynn

[decay]

Speaking of Terminal, if you need to delete a lot of data quickly, without using the trash, that's the way to go.

https://www.macworld.com/article/2082021...lders.html

It’s dangerously easy to delete files with the rm command. Here's an example. After you launch Terminal (in your /Applications/Utilities folder) type cd ~/Desktop to navigate to the Desktop directory. If you had a file here named MyFile.rtf that you never, ever wanted to see again, you could run this command:
[ Further reading: Learn more about macOS Catalina ]

rm MyFile.rtf

When you press Return, the file will go poof! It will be gone, toast, history. You can’t get it back.

You can even delete multiple files in a single command. So, if you have three files on your Desktop that you want to delete, and you want to delete them all at once, you can do so like this:

rm MyFile.rtf MyCV.rtf MyGreatAmericanNovel.rtf

Again, pressing the Return key does the dirty work.

If I sound ominous when discussing the powers of the rm command, there’s a good reason. As I said before, this command deletes files; it nukes them. You can't get them back. You can’t click on the Trash icon and retrieve files you’ve accidentally deleted.

But there’s a safety net: it’s the -i, or interactive, flag. So, if you're feeling cautious, you could run the above commands with this flag as follows:

-- AND --

Delete everything

The rm command has a powerful option, -R (or -r), otherwise known as the recursive option. When you run the rm -R command on a folder, you’re telling Terminal to delete that folder, any files it contains, any sub-folders it contains, and any files or folders in those sub-folders, all the way down.

For example, lets say you have a directory full of archives, containing sub-directories and files. Deleting each item individually from the Finder or the command line can take a long time. So just run the command like this:

rm -R Archives

Remember, this deletion is final.

[mrlynn]

Thanks, decay. That looks like a command I had best stay away from, given my aversion to command-lines, and my proclivity to make mistakes.

Though I do wonder if that Terminal command would let me delete the 'Pictures' folder. . .

In any event, once I got the message that the OS didn't want me to delete the 'Pictures' folder, but was perfectly happy with me deleting anything inside it, I had no trouble at all dragging the 343GB of photos to the Trash—and I still had the option of changing my mind, up to the point the 'Empty Trash' button asked me to click 'OK'.

/Mr Lynn