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zero hd folders in Macintosh HD I cannot remove

I have 3 folders that I am unable to remove. 2 have no folders underneath them and one looks like a reference to time capsule with many folders, but no content.


Move to trash is greyed out

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on May 19, 2020 11:16 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 17, 2020 3:01 PM

Trying to run it in Recovery mode would not work either, disks were mounted but still was unable to remove


Fix was this.


disabled SIP

booted into Single User Mode


/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /


rm -rf on both directories


now they are gone

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5 replies

May 19, 2020 11:39 AM in response to ldeffinbaugh

They are stored at the root level of the hard drive which is not modifiable by anyone, even root.


You would have to boot into Single-User mode and remove them via the Terminal, or you may be able to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP), remove the folders, then re-enable SIP.


The TimeMachine folder is a macOS thing, but I don't think it should be on the root level of the drive. I don't see it on my Mini at all, but I have seen it on my MacBook Pro. Could just be the local snapshot thing for laptops not directly connected to a backup drive. I don't have my MBP to check. I would leave it alone, for now.

The other folders I have no idea about.

If you had folders stored at the root level of the startup drive before upgrading to Catalina, they would have been moved to /Users/Shared/Relocated Items/. It's possible the empty folders were left behind.

Jun 17, 2020 10:14 AM in response to Kappy

ok so disabled sip and attempted to delete, no change


ran in terminal


MacBook-Pro-2015:CDI, llc 20 ldeffinbaugh$ rm -rf /CDI\,\ llc\ 20 

rm: /CDI, llc 20/.fseventsd: Permission denied

rm: /CDI, llc 20: Read-only file system

MacBook-Pro-2015:CDI, llc 20 ldeffinbaugh$ rm -rf /CDI\,\ llc\ 14 

rm: /CDI, llc 14/.fseventsd: Permission denied

rm: /CDI, llc 14: Read-only file system

MacBook-Pro-2015:CDI, llc 20 ldeffinbaugh$ 


Thoughts?

Jun 17, 2020 1:04 PM in response to ldeffinbaugh

As the error told you, the startup drive is mounted read-only in Catalina. No amount of disabling SIP will allow you to delete from a read-only volume. Even if there was a super-duper-root user account, you couldn't remove those files while booted into Catalina.


You would need to boot into Recovery, mount the drive in Disk Utility if it is encrypted, then use Terminal (Utilities menu) to remove them.

zero hd folders in Macintosh HD I cannot remove

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