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Deleting from USB does not free up space

I have a USB flash memory drive and when I delete files from it for some reason the space that the file used is not freed up. For example if I delete a file that is 6MB it will still say that 6MB is in use even though I have deleted it. I exchanged the drive for a different one but I am having the same problem with the new one. Any suggestions (other than going in to disk utility every time to erase the whole thing)?

Thanks in advance!

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Dec 11, 2007 12:49 PM

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Posted on Dec 11, 2007 12:53 PM

Are you emptying the Trash after you remove the item from the flash drive?
4 replies

Dec 25, 2007 11:22 AM in response to varjak paw

Thanks. I got this far, too. I emptied the trash and the 'get info' for a SanDisk USB flash drive shows that it is empty (249.7 MB available). When I tried to load 103 photos all at once I get the "not enough space" message. When I load the files in increments of 5-10 files it works up to a point and then I get the "not enough free space" message, when I try to load one more file. This is after I've loaded about 103 MB onto the drive. Yet, when I 'get info' on the flash drive it shows plenty of space still available.

I have even checked the USB flash drive on a windows machine as well and it also indicates the same amount of free space.

Any suggestions?

Jan 7, 2008 12:32 PM in response to Lost in the Trees

No this question was NOT answered. This problem drove me crazy until I figured out the answer. I had 2 USB flash drives and they were both behaving as described above. The 2 Gb model would only hold about 128mb of photos before it would report "not enough free space" to copy any more. I tried everything. Reformatting with MS-DOS, FAT 16, emptying the trash, repartitioning. Nothing worked until I plugged one of them into a real windoze box and formatted it with Fat-32 (win32s). Now I can copy all the files and use all the space. It is very slow, however. Thanks Apple, for finally getting to the bottom of this.

Deleting from USB does not free up space

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