My external hard drive trash won't empty

Did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same sort of issue right now. Tried to delete some back ups from my Seagate External Hard Drive and now they won't delete fro the trash... they also disappear when I eject my hard drive. Super weird!

you could try this…

in the Terminal type or copy and paste

sudo rm -R

add a space after the R. Drag one of the locked folders that are in the Trash into the Terminal, hit return. Enter your password, hit return.

Post the results.

Here's is what I just did to get files/folders deleted from my external hard drive connected to my iMac, using terminal:

First, drag the external hard drive file/folder into the trash. It should now appear in 'Trash' when you open it up in a finder window.

Now, change directories in terminal to your external hard drive (cd space and then drag your connected external hard drive into terminal and that will complete the path). Confirm you have changed directories by simply typing the following in terminal:

ls

Next, type the following command in terminal and include a space after:

sudo rm -R

Finally, drag the file/folder from trash into terminal after the command above that you've just entered. the command will look something like the following (includes the path to your external hard drive 'trashes' even though the files appear to be in your computer 'trash'):

sudo rm -R /Volumes/nameOFyourEHD/.Trashes/501/nameOFyourFileOrFolder

You may or may not be asked for your administrator password due to using 'sudo'. Enter your password if prompted, obviously.

Terminal may sit there for a few seconds blinking or return a long string like: override rw-r--r--t

and ending with ?

I just held down return through all the long strings ending with ? until terminal was back at my proifle bash:

my computer: my computer profile$

If the file you dragged from trash into terminal isn't removed after a few minutes, whether you get long strings ending with ?, or not, close terminal and start from the beginning. (my new iMac is much quicker and a better machine for this than my 2010 macbook that sometimes doesn't respond as well, probably from my own user error(s)

In my case, I am deleting time machine backups so there's a lot, which takes some time and the external hard drive will need to stay connected to the computer during this time.

Several times now I have followed the steps above to delete external hard drive file/folder.

well, I didn't memorize all the methods in the forum and I don't know you have seen them all. 😎

Try this… Open the trash and do a select all, right click on one of the files and select delete immediately, Assuming you haven't done that one. 😁

fabiocristi wrote:

Sure, I can do every file operation because I have that extra software installed.

Clearly you can't do "every" file operation. Deleting the trash for example.

It finally dawned on me you may be using a NTFS formatted dick. It seems the supplied software is no longer compatible.

fabiocristi wrote:

If I delete a file from the hard drive and then I try to empty the Trash, that file gets deleted. The others, the ones you're seeing in my screenshots, remain stuck.

Is this a new problem with recent update?

Updating NTFS software may be helpful

http://www.tuxera.com/os-x-el-capitan-get-support-for-ntfs-drives/

I just had much the same problem after a folder copy operation to my external NTFS USB 3.0 HDD failed early in the copy process, leaving some disjointed trash floating in '.trashes' Neverneverland.

None of the simpler suggestions mentioned earlier worked, but before I got to messing about in Terminal I ran a Windows 7 VM in Parallels, allowed Windows Explorer to see all files including the System ones, then deleted the '.trashes' files from all 3 partitions on the external NTFS HDD. One '.trashes' still wouldn't delete, but I renamed it and then tried deleting it. On the second attempt it worked ... phew!

I followed this step, and it wiped the trashes of my external, however, the drive did not free up any space when it should of freed up a few hundred gigs. Trying to do some cleanup using Disk Utils, but I'm concerned now...

Just try to use "sudo rm -rf /Volumes/YOURDRIVENAME/.Trashes

After that, just remove and reconnect you external drive.

Try restarting your MBP. Nothing in the trash should be being used after a restart.