cannot totally empty trash, says I do not have permission

[Sossity]

I have been running pathfinder alongside mac os native finder, & when I have deleted some files off my external hard drive, I see my trash looks full, so I do an empty trash securely, the finder icon jumps, & I get a message saying that I don not have permission to do the operation, & it gives me the option to continue or cancel.

So the trash never gets completely emptied, when my hard drive is connected & running.

I notice when my external hard drive is turned off & not connected & running, & when I have no thumb drives or external hard drives connected, the trash is empty.

Is there some sort of conflict between finder & pathfinder? I have looked in pathfinders preferences, & there is an option to shut off finder, but there is a waring that shutting off the native finder could interfere with mac operating system functions like time machine, etc, so I have left finder running & to run as well.

[justperry]

Originally Posted by Sossity

I have been running pathfinder alongside mac os native finder, & when I have deleted some files off my external hard drive, I see my trash looks full, so I do an empty trash securely, the finder icon jumps, & I get a message saying that I don not have permission to do the operation, & it gives me the option to continue or cancel.

So the trash never gets completely emptied, when my hard drive is connected & running.

I notice when my external hard drive is turned off & not connected & running, & when I have no thumb drives or external hard drives connected, the trash is empty.

Is there some sort of conflict between finder & pathfinder? I have looked in pathfinders preferences, & there is an option to shut off finder, but there is a waring that shutting off the native finder could interfere with mac operating system functions like time machine, etc, so I have left finder running & to run as well.

Click on your external and get info, you should have permissions like the one below in Screenshot.
Is it HFS, NTFS or what.
You could also empty it with Terminal like: sudo rm 'path to file'

To secure empty the trash command: sudo rm -fPR 'path to file'

Apple Mac OS X tips and tweaks