Sudo rm -rf or Trashcan: Which is better for SSD health? Users can sudo rm -rf a file or they can move it to the trash and empty the trashcan. I want to know whether one option has benefits over the other with regard to the "health" of an internal solid state drive on a Macbook pro laptop.
Both options (as well as any other user-level way of deleting files) will have the same result at the end: the directory entry of the file will be removed and any disk blocks used by the file will be marked as free (details depend on file system used). So there is no difference at all on device level.