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Since installing Mac OS X 10.6, whenever I empty the trash, it takes about 50x as long as it used to under 10.5. I just emptied about 100 files (totaling 50 megs / all local files), and it was about 20 minutes.

It feels like its doing a secure delete, but I'm just using the "Empty Trash" option (click on bin -- choose empty trash). Is it possible that the secure delete is turned on by default?

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That is strange. I found Snow Leopard to be much quicker emptying the trash as I've move backups around with lots of files and end up deleting them. – hanleyp Aug 29 '09 at 14:20

1 Answer

up vote 24 down vote accepted

Go to Finder » Preferences, and in the Advanced tab uncheck Empty Trash Securely.

The default did not change for me, but for some unknown reason it did change for some people.

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Omg, thank you! I thought FileVault for some reason forced me to empty my trash securely, which totally doesn't make sense. Now I don't have to wait for hours before the trash is emptied. – ormuriauga Feb 13 '11 at 11:51

protected by Jeff Atwood♦ Jun 7 '10 at 6:38

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