Delete Locked files in bulk

[iwicked]

I only recently shifted from Windows to Mac and I'm still not quite clear about the intricacies of "locked files". Plugging in my old external HDD into my RMBP and deleting unwanted files/folders I find many of them sitting in my Trash because these are apparently "locked".

I'm not sure why these are locked in the first place but if I unlock each file/folder one by one then it will take me a long time to delete. Is there no way I can remove all these files from Trash by unlocking them in bulk?

Thanks.

 

[HankAZ]

Not sure what you mean by "locked". OS X won't let you delete files that are in use by a program, but that is easy enough to fix.

Try logging out of your account and then back in. What happens when you try to delete the files after logging back into your account?

Could you post a screenshot of the error message, and another of the list of files in your trash bin.

 

[iwicked]

Not sure what you mean by "locked". OS X won't let you delete files that are in use by a program, but that is easy enough to fix.

Try logging out of your account and then back in. What happens when you try to delete the files after logging back into your account?

Could you post a screenshot of the error message, and another of the list of files in your trash bin.

I have restarted my Mac several times before deleting the files. That doesn't seem to help much. Actually, I do not get any error message. The locked files simply do not get erased from Trash and will sit there until I manually unlock them one by one from "Get Info". Here are screenshots of the locked files and the prompt I get before trying to delete them. Selecting "Remove all items" does not get rid of the locked files.

 

[HankAZ]

I don’t recall ever having seen that. Here are a couple of things to try:

First, try holding the OPTION key down while attempting to empty the trash bin.

If that doesn’t work, try this:
Open the Trash and look if one or more of the items in the trash have a lock symbol on their icon. If that is the case you can unlock them by:
1. Right-click > Information (cmd + i)
2. Uncheck Locked

Let us know if that helps or if you’re still having issues.

Ultimately you may have issues with some of the permission on your hard drive. You can repair those as follows:

1. Open Disk Utlity ( ⌘-[Spacebar] and type Disk Utility)
2. Select your hard drive from the left side bar
3. Click Verify Disk Permissions (at the bottom of the window). And let that run.
4. When it’s done, click Repair Disk Permissions.
5. Try deleting the files again.

 

[iwicked]

I don’t recall ever having seen that. Here are a couple of things to try:

First, try holding the OPTION key down while attempting to empty the trash bin.

If that doesn’t work, try this:
Open the Trash and look if one or more of the items in the trash have a lock symbol on their icon. If that is the case you can unlock them by:
1. Right-click > Information (cmd + i)
2. Uncheck Locked

Let us know if that helps or if you’re still having issues.

Ultimately you may have issues with some of the permission on your hard drive. You can repair those as follows:

1. Open Disk Utlity ( ⌘-[Spacebar] and type Disk Utility)
2. Select your hard drive from the left side bar
3. Click Verify Disk Permissions (at the bottom of the window). And let that run.
4. When it’s done, click Repair Disk Permissions.
5. Try deleting the files again.

Thanks much for your help HankAZ. Is there any way of selecting multiple locked files and unlocking them all at once? Like I could do in Windows by selecting multiple hidden files and just clicking on "Hide" and it would hide/unhide all the files instead of doing it individually from the properties menu. When I select and click (cmd + i) for the multiple locked files, this is what comes up and I would need to untick each one separately. Is there no way to do this in bulk?



The said files are in my external HDD. When I try to run disk utility the "Verify Disk Permissions" option is greyed out. Any ideas?

 

[HankAZ]

Karen raises a good point/question. Mac OS X can read NTFS volumes, but cannot write to them natively. The delete function will require the ability to update the drive ("write" access), so that could also be part of the issue. There are utility apps that allow OS X to write/update NTFS volumes (Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X is the one I use).

 

[iwicked]

I am aware of this issue guys and hence I downloaded Tuxera NTFS to be able to read and write NTFS format. My mac is only 128 GB so I can't really copy the contents form my 1 TB HDD. I was thinking that perhaps this could be the problem. So is there no way without having to format the drive?

I really appreciate your inputs guys.

 

[iwicked]

So you already had Tuxera NTFS installed when you tried to delete the files?

I did, yes.

 

[Fernando Avila1]

So you already had Tuxera NTFS installed when you tried to delete the files?