Will the trash can continue to delete when you have put it to sleep?
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Jim
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Trash Emptying While Asleep?
Comments: 4 Responses to “Trash Emptying While Asleep?”
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Not sure. You'd need to have a lot of data in there for it to take long enough to test. If I put some files in there to test, it would empty in a split second before I could put the machine to sleep.
If that's your situation, give it a try. It can't hurt. See if the trash empties, or at least makes some progress, while your Mac is sleeping.
I put many files in the trash and clicked delete basket - trash can opened, I clicked on the option key (held it down as I did so) and clicked empty securely. The trash can held about 300 items to be deleted. It was so slow, I thought I needed to restart my computer - after restarting my computer, I still had a lot (200 or more files) to delete. So I put the computer to sleep and woke it up maybe 15 or 20 minutes later just to so how it was doing. It was like watching grass grow. Why so long?
Jim: It is slow because you are using the Secure option. Not only is that much slower, but that is only available on older Macs with a hard drive (not SSD) with El Capitan and before (if I remember correctly). Any reason why you are doing this? It would be much much faster without it. With the secure option on, it overwrites every bite of data several times as a precaution. But it is hardly necessary for the vast majority of users.
Don't have time to research now, but recall reading that the secure empty feature was removed when found to not actually be secure... regardless of drive type.