Bridge 2020 external drive file delete is moved to main drive Trash (Mojave)

[ashg3395181]

[I keep finding problems with Bridge 2020 w.r.t. Bridge CS5 almost on a daily basis - un upgrade it aint]

This is a relatively minor bug but dangerous when emptying the main drive Trash (MacOs Mojave).  The more serious problem of file deletion in Bridge is being discussed on other threads.

Each external drive has its own trash (/Volumes/<drive>/.Trashes) whereas there is the main drive user trash (/Users/<user>/.Trash).

When Bridge is deleting a file on an external drive, it moves it to the user's local trash.

This is not good for a number of reasons:

1. If you don't know this behaviour and empty your local trash - you have unwittingly permanently deleted files on external drives;

2. It would eat up storage on local drive which is more precious than external drives: A file deletion remainig on the same drive has no net storage cost - deleting a 1 GB file does not result in an additional 1 GB being used up on that drive - whereas moving the file over to the user main drive does have this cost - I haven't tested the system to see what would happen if there is not enough space on the local drive to receive the deleted file(s).

[StefanoCovre]

I have the same Issue in MacOS Catalina.
I work only with external drives and everytime I delete a picture, she moves to the System Trashbin and NOT in the External Drive Trash folder.
This clogs up the Mac OS System HD and when I delete several files, the process takes a very long time, because Bridge moves the files from the External Drive to the Macintosh HD!!

PLEASE ADOBE  FIX THAT!!! 

[gary_sc]

Hello Stephano and Ash,

I do not belive that either of you are correct. You may be, but my experience with the Mac since 1985 says no. 

Here's my evidence: If you move a file from an external drive to your computer, you will see a "move" dialog window. If the file is 1GB, you definately will see that window. When you delete a 1 GB file (or folder) from an external drive, there is no transfer window. 

In addition, and I welcome for you to try this, take any file from an external drive and trash that file. Go into the trash and you will see that file. Now eject that drive. Look in the trash, it will not be there. Plug that drive back into your computer, the file is back in the trash. 

Yes the file is "showing up" in the computer's Trash can, but the file is still on the external drive and when deleted, the flag for that file is removed and the space that the file was occupying is now available for new files to overwrite that space.

Please, if either of you have any evidence that what I said is wrong and can demonstrate how I am wrong, PLEASE show me. I do not want to be wrong on an issue that is so vital. 

Otherwise, please let me know that you now understand what's taking place.

[StefanoCovre]

What you say it was true before the last Mac OS X update (Catalyna). But now it's no more true at all.
If you have Catalyna and you delete with Adobe Bridge CC 2020 a picture stored in an external drive (HDD or SSD), it will be moved to the System Trash, not in the Trash folder of the External Drive (infact the removing process it takes a long time).
If I eject the External Hard Drive after the deletion, I'll find the files in the System's Trash, with the System SSD filled by this files.

[StefanoCovre]

As you can see in the attached files, the deletd files are moved from the external storage to the system trash (filling the System SSD).
Facts:
1) System's SSD space filled by more of 8 GB
2) The Files are in the Trash also with the External drive ejected.

[ericd64104769]

Exactly the same problem here. I always use an external SSD to store the images I'm working on, also when culling. If I want to delete the images, often 70-100 + GB (I shoot large raw images), this fills my SystemSSD to the point there is no space left for the system to function.

Never had this before (Bridge user since the start, essential to my workflow) I'm a professional photographer, this makes Bridge nearly impossible to work with.

Is there any solution yet? Can't find the issue anywhere but here.

(MacOS 10.14.6 and latest Bridge 2020 version.)

[russd70585515]

I have the exact same problem!

I delete 2,000 files on an external drive and they all come swooshing over to my HD on my mac!  So annoying!!

I am using Bridge. and am on Big Sur.

Please fix this!

[DinkieDino]

This is insane, just ran into this! We've just switched our entire workflow from working on servers to external disks on Adobe's advice because we kept running into issues with Bridge and Photoshop & local servers, but now I cannot delete files from an external disk without it moving them to my internal drive???

I have a folder of 80gb that I wanted to delete, but I can't delete it because I only have 60gb of free space. Why do I need 80gb of space to DELETE 80gb of files????

[gary_sc]

Please, as was demonstrated by Stefano, I was wrong in my original understanding of how the Trash works (thank you Stefano for your presentation). But this is an Apple issue, NOT an Adobe issue. It is impossible for Adobe to "fix" something that they are not responsible for and have no mechanism to do so.

However, if you (DinkieDino) only have 60 GB of space left on your hard drive, you have bigger issues to deal with. That is unless you have an external drive with lots and lots of space you use for PS to use as its cache work.

To do the short-term fix, you need to delete your images in blocks, say 20 GB at a time, until you get the files you want to be deleted are gone.

But at that point, you need to give yourself some space on your hard drive. Either delete or move files to an external drive. For example, I have a 1 TB drive, and I always keep it about half full. I have three external drives: my primary external drive ( 4TB) is used to hold all of my images and essential documents. I have a 2nd 4TB drive that mirrors my primary drive, solely as a backup. Finally, I have a 3rd 4 TB drive for Apple's Time Machine. (I also use a cloud service for protection against a major catastrophe, like a house fire.)

Remember, hard drive space is used for "paging" currently unused information from your RAM as well as for PS, Lightroom(s), and all of your applications to do their "behind the scene" work. The more space you provide for them to do their thing, the faster your computer will feel and act.

[gary_sc]

I wish to update my comments on Stephano's video. 

I tried to duplicate his result and cannot. I'm not working off a server, only an external hard drive so that might provide different results, I cannot verify because I do not have access to a server environment.

What I did was take a large file (55 MB) on an external HD and "trash" the file. The file was immediately in the Trash can and there was no increase in the contents of my computer's HD. There was also no Move window. I then dragged that large file to my Desktop and suddenly, the Move window showed displaying the file's bytes as they transferred over to my computer. The total size of the files on my HD went up the same amount as the file. This did not happen when the file was observable in the Trash.

What I suspect might be happening in DinkiDino's computer (and others), is that the Mac needs space to manage this transfer of data as it's deleting the file. The more files there are, the longer this takes. (If you delete 1000 ten kb files, it will take much longer than if you delete ten 1000 kb files. After all, if DinkiDino's images are jpg files, and he's deleting 80 GB, if the JPGs are large, and (say) 6 MB each, that's over 13,000 files. That's a lot. Since I've already talked about how free space is vital to a healthy Mac, he needs to put his content on a diet.

[ericd64104769]

Hi all,

I posted nearly two years ago about having this problem.  Since then updated MacOs, and Bridge tot latest. But the problem persists.  Bridge really DOES copy file to delete on an external disk to de system disk. 

This should not happen, even if your HD has plenty of space  (I agree that not having plenty of free disk space can lead to other problems).

I'm a photo-professional, assignments are often +300 Gb.  I always work from external SSD's so my system-disk, a 512 GB SSD, is kept clean, and always has a minimum of 250 GB free. 

I have to work fast, and deleting "via" the system-disk takes precious time - even if it doesn't choke the system. 

My work-around: In Bridge, I don't delete the images on my external drive but move them to a separate folder on the same drive.

Then afterwards i the Finder I move this folder to the Bin: it ends up in the external drive's Bin (!), which I then empty. MacOs does that in a snap, without first copying to the system-disk.

So I'm right thinking this is not an Apple problem? 

Anyway, Adobe or Apple, or both:  I need to get work done as smoothly as possible. And this is all a bit amateurish. Before 2019 things were simpler and faster, I don't understand this "progress". 

Best regards,

Eric

[DinkieDino]

Hey Gary,

It's been two weeks since I've heard from anyone, but this is still a serious bug (that's apparently been around for over 2 years!!!) that impacts everyone using external disks with the serious risk of permanently losing files as users expect trashbins on external drives to work like they ought to (and do so in literally every other software). I don't think telling me to go on a content diet is the proper response to this.

Is there a bug report page for Bridge or a log to keep track of this?

Cheers,

Mathijs

[DinkieDino]

Hey Gary,

Thank you for your reply. I am working on an external drive, not a server: On a server files are instantly deleted (as expected) rather than moved to the local trashbin. Stefano demonstrated this to be an Adobe Bridge issue correctly, this is not an Apple issue.

A move dialog only appears when software is told to show one and it'd be odd to have a move dialog for deleting files, so the missing of a move dialog says very little (if nothing). Diskspace totals are also not recalculated continiously, if you keep such a window open you cannot expect to see

I highly suggest you try the following: Put a large file on your external drive, delete it in Bridge & eject the disk. The file should now, if your theory is correct and thus not moved to the computer, no longer be accessible.

But this is not the case, you can drag these files back out from the trashbin with the external disk disconnected & open them just fine. This proves that the file was moved to the harddrive (And yes, my diskspace used -does- increase). Deleting files is also intensely slow because of this, as moving 80gb to an internal drive takes quite a lot more time than deleting them.

Now try the following: Delete the another large file from your external drive, but now from the finder instead. It is moved to the trashbin as can be verified, but now eject your drive and check again: It is no longer in the trashbin, as it is located on the trashbin of the external drive, not the local drive. Connect the drive again, and it re-appears in the trashbin when detected. No files are moved!

Finder also offers the option to not move to the trashbin, but simply delete permanently.

This is not an apple issue, this is an Adobe Bridge issue. Instead of putting the deleted files in the trashbin of the external disk (where they belong), it MOVES them to the local harddisk's trashbin. This is not normal behaviour on any system, nor is it how it works anywhere else on an apple computer.

I'm working with large raw image files ranging from 80mb to 300mb each. 60-80gb of free harddisk space is plenty to work with these files without any issues (and has been just fine for the past 10 years!), especially if you're working with files on external drives or servers.

Often I'll be working with folders larger than the capacity of my entire harddrive or large large numbers of files. Not only would doing it in 20gb batches slow down my work considerably, it takes 10 times as long because it's NOT deleting: it's MOVING files. A much more intense operation that reduces the life of the harddrive unneccesarily, when all I want to do is delete files.

Cheers,

Mathijs

[Lumigraphics]

Typically, files on server volumes are deleted instantly. I have not ever seen deleted files copied to the internal drive and I use Bridge in production on both Mac and Windows.

[DinkieDino]

That is correct, on servers we are having other issues but deleting files is not one of them. The issue is with (local) external drives.

[gary_sc]

To all,

I have been able to completely replicate the problem and I reported this to Adobe (please remember that I do not work for Adobe). They were ALSO ABLE TO REPLICATE THE PROBLEM but were only able to state that it has been added to a stack of other issues that need to be taken care of. 

Considering the number of issues in that stack that have not been resolved yet, I have no idea when this will be resolved. I'm sure it will be eventually, but the "when" in this situation is not known. I really wish I could provide a more satisfactory statement, but I'd be lying and I do not want to do that.

All I can say at this point is that IF you are deleting very large sets of files, you would probably be better off doing the deletion from the Finder instead of from Bridge. That, plus my comments on opening space on your Mac that I mentioned before should also be done, but more because the Mac needs that space to perform better. This has only limited overlap with this issue, but it should be done anyway.

Otherwise, you can always go to: https://adobebridge.uservoice.com

And hit them over and over with requests for this to be fixed.

Good luck!

[DinkieDino]

Thank you Gary!

Very glad to hear that, I was not aware you weren't working for Adobe, I sure hope they're paying you for dealing with their customer service! Apologies for the grumpiness.

Cheers,

Mathijs

[handsandfeet]

Just here to say that this continues to be a problem with MacOS Ventura and Bridge 2023. It's absolutely baffling how bad Bridge has been ever since the Creative Cloud transition. It used to be blazingly fast at everything. Now it feels like a slog most of the time. It's still faster to cull in Bridge than in Lightroom, but barely.

To the issue at hand: In previous versions, I would have to sit and wait as it copied files to the main drive upon deletion. Now it seems to be masking that transfer time somehow, but it's still happening in the background. I like the workaround idea posted by Eric, but truly silly that this requires it. I don't care if it's Apple's issue or Adobe's. Adobe is a big enough customer that they can work directly with Apple to fix this kind of stuff. It's bad for Adobe in that it slows their customers down when on deadline, and it's bad for Apple in that it puts so much more wear on the internal SSD and causes more service requests and user dissatisfaction.

[george0D44]

is this problem FIXED? 😄 

for 3 days the adobe support is still triing to fix this one for me :))