Unable to delete a file (A windows backup file on an external drive)

I had an old drive I used ot use for windows backups that I copied onto a new NAS device (WDCloud) and it has a few files/directories on it that were associated with the old Windows laptop. SO I am trying to tidy up the drive and remove superfluous files but there is 1 file in the directories that I cant get rid of no matter how much I try.


Delete in Finder just comes up and says I do not have permissions to delete : The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.


So I check Info and I see that 'everyone' only has read permissions - I try to add myself with more right but I cant seem to get the user name right even though I type it right - I am sure.


So to heck with this I will jumo into terminal and remove it there ... but nope that wont work either ..


===============================================

gordons-MBP:400GB Drive GordonK$ ls -l

total 8

drwxrwxr-x 1 GordonK staff 264 8 Apr 12:26 IBMX200

-rwxrwxrwx 1 GordonK staff 528 28 Dec 2016 MediaID.bin

drwxrwxr-x@ 1 GordonK staff 264 28 Dec 2016 RECYCLER

drwxrwxr-x@ 1 GordonK staff 264 28 Dec 2016 RRbackups

drwxrwxr-x@ 1 GordonK staff 264 28 Dec 2016 System Volume Information

drwxrwxr-x 1 GordonK staff 264 28 Dec 2016 boot


gordons-MBP:400GB Drive GordonK$ rm MediaID.bin


override rwxrwxrwx GordonK/staff uchg for MediaID.bin? y


rm: MediaID.bin: Operation not permitted


=======================================


Any suggestions for other commands to try ? I am an admin of the Mac.




MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 8, 2020 5:01 AM

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4 replies

Apr 8, 2020 7:07 AM in response to Gkinghrn

What BobTheFisherman said about NTFS.


If it is not an NTFS formatted drive, then each of these files, folders, and folder contents have been locked with the uchg/schg bit which prevents change or deletion. A password prompt will appear due to the use of sudo, and your admin password will not echo when typed:


sudo chflags -v nouchg noschg ./MedialD.bin
rm -f ./MedialD.bin


If that works, and you want to remove the directories, and their contents, then do the following:


sudo chflags -R nochg noschg ./IBMX200 ./RECYCLER ./RRbackups ./boot ./"System Volume Information"
rm -rf ./IBMX200 ./RECYCLER ./RRbackups ./boot ./"System Volume Information"




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Unable to delete a file (A windows backup file on an external drive)

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