emptying trash negative items to delete

[dacoolest]

Perhaps its deleting files that are to be sent to the trash in the future ?

 

[Benjaymuso]

Minus numbers on delete

If you keep checking the available space left on your hard drive it keeps going up so it seems legit. Backups use a lot of memory which takes a while to delete

 

[orthorim]

seems like the best way to kill time machine backups is to reformat the disk. takes < 30 seconds, better than waiting 5 hours for the delete to eventually not work...

 

[jimbo101]

Not just me then. Removing Time Machine Backups from a drive that has a bunch of other stuff on it so didn't want to reformat it. Just trying to delete the old Time Machine files and now at -311,183 and counting. Going to leave this running for a while and will come back to it later. Slightly annoying as I would rather be doing something useful than watching the numbers rack up... yawn.

 

[urbanforces]

Perhaps its deleting files that are to be sent to the trash in the future ?

this is one of the best answers i've seen on any topic on this website.

 

[ronhiner]

yup... using disk utility to erase the time machine drive is the quick and easy fix to this.

I'm on 10.8.5 and it was taking forever to empty the trash, then it went negative... and then i found this thread.

 

[drummerben04]

Looks like this bug is still going strong in 2014

yep surprisingly mine finished at -26,000. The boot.efi is what you will find still in your recycling bin if you decide to delete the time machine backups their. Just hold down the option key when you click empty and you won't get that problem. Worked for me

 

[Nick Soares]

Same thing here. I google searched and found this thread. I am stuck at -87K (any ideas?)

 

[alsilver]

Thanks for all your posts. I, too, had a trash that was emptying into negative numbers and didn't know what to do. After reading these posts, I decided to leave my computer on all night and see if the problem resolved after enough time passed. This morning, although initially the TRASH FOLDER looked as if it were still full, I "emptied" it once more and the bin emptied in a second. All I needed was patience, which these posts gave me.

 

[ZirusBlackheart]

I'm trying to sort this prob too but i now have this error.

The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -22).

This is doing it via CMD-Right Click (Secure Empty Trash).

Anyone have any ideas?

Thx loads for any help