Gigs go away every time i put something on external drive???

[tennismanclay]

I have a 750gb external hard drive. Anytime i put something on it, then take it off, the space left is the amount of when it was on it.

I will put it this way. Say i have a 5gb external drive. I put a 2gb movie on it, then take it off later. Now it says i have 3gb left, even though i have deleted it?

Is there anyway around this with terminal or something. Its a pain having to reformat cuzz i have to drag all 60gigs of movies off of the drive onto my computer, reformat, then drag them back on.



thanks

 

[atszyman]

How are you moving stuff off the external drive?

Are you copying then deleting? Do you empty the trash after you delete the file? Do you have any sort of deletion protection like Norton running?

 

[killmoms]

If you're putting the files in the trash and emptying it, that space is freed up. Are you going by the space free indicator on the desktop? That doesn't always update immediately (or ever, on Tiger).

 

[TEG]

Unless the drive is connected over a network, you still have to empty the trash to actually delete the files. Once you empty the trash, the files are actually deleted and you will regain your missing space.

TEG

 

[tennismanclay]

i just plugged in a 30 gb drive, well a couple of days ago. Deleted everything on it. unplugged/plugger back in, waited and it said i had 1.8gb left. I ended up reformatting.


well i will just have to live with it i guess. my computer is all screwed up.

 

[atszyman]

i just plugged in a 30 gb drive, well a couple of days ago. Deleted everything on it. unplugged/plugger back in, waited and it said i had 1.8gb left. I ended up reformatting.


well i will just have to live with it i guess. my computer is all screwed up.

Did you empty the trash after deleting everything? Even if you disconnect everything will remain in the trash until it is emptied.

 

[killmoms]

When you use Cmd+Delete in the Finder, that moves files to the Trash. You still have to empty the trash to free that space.

Note: this is like every other OS that has a "Trash" area.

 

[tennismanclay]

Did you empty the trash after deleting everything? Even if you disconnect everything will remain in the trash until it is emptied.

im not really sure, im so flustered with my computer now its hard to think. Everything is going bazerk. lol


thanks for the help though guys

 

[tennismanclay]

When you use Cmd+Delete in the Finder, that moves files to the Trash. You still have to empty the trash to free that space.

Note: this is like every other OS that has a "Trash" area.

i know =] all i know is that my 30gb drive had 2gb left and no files that i could see in the drive, and the files weren't in my trash. and i currently cant empty my trash right now. see this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/459818/

but no files that my drive had in it were there. "even though they were time machine backups, for that i use the 750gb im talking about the 30gb"