The Mac OS X Trash


If you’ve used a computer before, you’re familiar with the idea of the Trash—you put files in the Trash when you don’t need them anymore, and then empty the Trash when you’re sure you won’t ever need them again. (If you’ve been a Windows user, you know this as the Recycle Bin.) It’s a kind of buffer between being and nothingness, but once you empty the Trash, there’s little hope of getting your files back. (There are third-party software utilities that can sometimes recover deleted files. See Chapter 22 for more on disk utility software.)

Remember, when you put files in the Trash, they aren’t deleted yet; the actual deletion occurs when you empty the Trash. But moving files there isn’t a good idea unless you’re positive you want to get rid of them. It’s too easy to empty the Trash and then discover that an important file went away with the garbage collector.

Use the Trash

The Trash folder is just like any other folder, but it’s a special one. You can drag files and folders onto the Trash icon, which is on the dock (see Figure 4-20), or you can move them there by selecting them and pressing z-BACKSPACE.


Figure 4-20: Here’s what the Trash icon looks like when it’s empty, on the left, and when it contains files, on the right.

One way you can empty the Trash is by selecting Empty Trash... from the Finder menu; you can also press z-SHIFT-BACKSPACE, or you can click and hold down the mouse button when the cursor is over the Trash icon in the DOCK, and select Empty Trash from the contextual menu. In all cases, unless you have turned off the warning in the Finder preferences, the Finder will display an alert, asking you to confirm that you want to empty the Trash. Think twice! If you have any doubts, click Cancel, because you cannot undo this action.

Tip

If you want to delete your files forever, so no one—not even you—can ever get them back, select Finder | Secure Empty Trash. This not only deletes the files, it overwrites them with zeros several times so even disk utilities cannot recover them. But make sure you really want to delete these files—there’s no way to get them back.

Remove Files from the Trash

As I mentioned previously, the Trash is a folder, though a very special kind. If you put files in the Trash and later realize that you want to keep them, just click the Trash icon in the Dock to open the Trash window, move the files where you want, and then close the Trash window.




How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
ISBN: 007225355X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 171

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