idea

[Simon Hobson]

Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> why does deleting a file move it to .Trash but not make the space available for reuse?

Because, as already said, as far as the filesystem is concerned it's still a file taking up space.

Longer answer: I guess you are using a "desktop" interface, click the file, and tell the file manager to delete it. It doesn't delete it, it moves it to the Trash (english: wastebasket) from where you can recover it if you decide it was a mistake deleting it. You have to explicitly empty the wastebasket before the file actually disappears and the space becomes available again.

While this isn't really an rsync issue, I see two workarounds :

1) Discipline yourself to emptying the wastbasket from time to time - I've seen user with *massive* amounts of stuff in there as they've never emptied it for as long as they've owned the computer !

2) Use an "--exclude" clause to rsync to exclude files in the wastebasket, then these files won't get synced to your flash drive.