(error code -50) when trying to empty trash

[Vanderdecken]

Hello,

I'm having a problem getting some files emptied from my trash. The were some old art portfolio pc files from the 90s I dug out of some archives and inadvertently copied (I'm sure they are clean files without viruses). Now I can't trash them.

I'm running a Mac Pro (early 2008) with El Capitan with two internal hard drives. I use one hard drive to back up the other so the files were copied to both. I've done some research on the problem and have tried Trash It! and Cocktail's file removal utility to no avail (I also tried putting the files in different folders in the trash). I've also tried Terminal > sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash and get Invalid Argument when I try to remove the files. I've also tried restarting multiple times and Disk First Aid finds no problems.

When I cycle through the trash messages some are The operation cannot be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50), and other's are File Is In Use.

Thanks in advance and assistance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ferrarr]

When you say, "so the files were copied to both.", are you using Time Machine (TM) to make the backups? If so, how did you move the files from the TM backup to the trash? The proper way to remove files from TM, is to enter TM, then locate the file, right click on the file, select delete all copies of the file, then, after you exit out of TM, delete the actual file from your system drive. If you used finder to go through your TM backup drive to find and delete the files, then the system "may" still think they are in use.

Try to hold "option" when you empty the trash, that may work.

 

[Vanderdecken]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not using Time Machine, I just copy files straight over to the other internal drive. Option > empty trash hasn't worked either.

 

[whitedb]

Error -50 trying to move of delete files

Hello,

I'm having a problem getting some files emptied from my trash. The were some old art portfolio pc files from the 90s I dug out of some archives and inadvertently copied (I'm sure they are clean files without viruses). Now I can't trash them.

I'm running a Mac Pro (early 2008) with El Capitan with two internal hard drives. I use one hard drive to back up the other so the files were copied to both. I've done some research on the problem and have tried Trash It! and Cocktail's file removal utility to no avail (I also tried putting the files in different folders in the trash). I've also tried Terminal > sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash and get Invalid Argument when I try to remove the files. I've also tried restarting multiple times and Disk First Aid finds no problems.

When I cycle through the trash messages some are The operation cannot be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50), and other's are File Is In Use.

Thanks in advance and assistance would be greatly appreciated!

I am having EXACTLY the same problem. I was backing up some old PC discs to my Mac (MacPro 3,1 running El Capitan) and now cannot move or delete some of them. Some of the offending files have strange characters in the name: AD␀i␀s␀k␀1. I tried to rename them but an error "the name xxx cannot be used Try using a name with fewer characters, or with no punctuation marks."

Did you find any solution. I have tried terminal commands and get the invalid argument error.

Thanks.

 

[Vanderdecken]

I am having EXACTLY the same problem. I was backing up some old PC discs to my Mac (MacPro 3,1 running El Capitan) and now cannot move or delete some of them. Some of the offending files have strange characters in the name: AD␀i␀s␀k␀1. I tried to rename them but an error "the name xxx cannot be used Try using a name with fewer characters, or with no punctuation marks."

Did you find any solution. I have tried terminal commands and get the invalid argument error.

Thanks.

I had the same strange characters in file name, never found a solution so I created a new user account which has a clean trash.