Removing system folders from Mac

[Sheridan]

Bit of an oddly specific case here but I'm interested to see if there is a quick way around it.

 

User had a Mac Mini 2014 with the 1.4 processor - upgraded to a 1tb SSD running Monterrey. All working fine etc and the user upgraded to a higher spec 2014 Mac Mini with i5 and more memory etc and the apple SSD (i.e not Sata) so put the old 1tb drive in as a secondary drive as it contained all the data

 

Works fine - new Mac Mini sees the secondary drive and all the data. So the user decided to 'tidy up' the secondary drive - remove all the Applications, Library folders etc as they aren't used anymore, after all the OS is now on the onboard SSD! Problem is on a lot of the folders like these no matter what permissions or elevation they try it always says they don't have permissions, or in terminal says its a Read-only file system - despite the user having read/write on the whole drive.

 

I've had a look and can't see a way around this, presumably these folders are locked somehow as they were system folders, but is there a way around this without formatting the drive and starting copying the files back over again?

[Marci]

At a guess - turn off FileVault, reboot into recovery console, disable SIP, and then mount and delete from there. Reboot, back to recovery console, re-enable SIP, reboot in MacOS, re-enable FileVault.

https://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac-os-x/

Edited March 23, 2023 by Marci

[Sheridan]

At a guess - turn off FileVault, reboot into recovery console, disable SIP, and then mount and delete from there. Reboot, back to recovery console, re-enable SIP, reboot in MacOS, re-enable FileVault.

https://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac-os-x/

 

Cheers, filevault isn't enabled on it but I'll try disabling SIP and do it that way. Just need to get access to reboot it now as its always being used!

[Mrpower]

I know this is probably going to be the long way around, or another way around it. Copy the file you want to keep on to an external drive, reformat / delete internal drive, copy file back on to internal drive.

[Sheridan]

Cheers for the advice, in the end the easiest way was to completely wipe the internal drive and then copy the files back on. Something must have happened at the volume/partition level because I still couldn’t rename the volume after disabling SIP

 

All sorted now though - happy Mac mini!

[Domenic75]

Deleting files and folders on a Mac is useful information, I constantly use it from the off site

https://support.apple.com/uk-ua/guide/mac-help/mchlp1093/mac