Deleting attachments from hard drive

To learn Zotero, I imported a subset of references from another reference manager, manipulating and therefore compromising some of the references for testing purposes. I would like to delete all of the references along with the physical copies of the attachments on my hard drive. But I noticed that when I deleted a reference, the attachment remained at Zotero/Storage. So I followed the instructions at

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20148/deleting-attachment-notes

by creating a saved search consisting of all attachments in the library, selecting all, right clicking, and clicking Move Items to Trash. However, the PDFs remain in their folders at Zotero/Storage.

I guess I could just delete everything in Zotero/Storage, but I'd like to be able to control what happens to attachments directly from Zotero, which seems like a much more transparent and a safer way to manipulate one's material. Is there a way, then, to delete attachments directly in Zotero? And what is the rationale for keeping attachments after the references are gone?
  • did you empty the Zotero trash? Zotero does remove file attachments of deleted files from storage.
  • Thanks. I completed missed that. I had tried to locate a command with Trash in it on the Help menu, and nothing came up.

    Not out of the woods yet, though. When I select multiple items in Trash, right click, and click Delete items . . . nothing happens. Do I need to delete one reference at a time?
  • right-click on the trash, empty trash
  • (I think deleting should work, too, though, not sure why it doesn't; might take some time for large delete operations)
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