Moving files to the Trash, deleting them, and erasing them all “get rid of” them, but the effects are slightly different. The following discusses the differences and offers a warning about trashing a lot of files with the same name.

Moving something to the Trash simply moves it into a special folder where it waits to be deleted with the Empty Trash command. Items moved to the Trash still exist until the Trash is emptied, so trashing items does not make the space the use on disk available until the Trash is emptied.

Deleting items in File Buddy is equivalent to moving them to the Trash and then emptying the trash. The end result is that there is no longer a reference to the deleted item in the file catalog and the disk space previously occupied by deleted files becomes available for use.

Erasing files means to write over their contents before deleting them. File Buddy can erase files by overwriting them with zeroes, random data, or text you specify, and it can overwrite them more than once if you so desire.