Help deleting files off of Seagate external drive

[Bengws]

Hey - I've been trying to free up space on my 320gb Seagate drive by deleting stuff I don't need anymore (video files, music, pictures, etc).

I pressed cmd+delete to trash the files, and I've emptied the trash multiple times and the files are gone from my drive and NOT in the trash, but the space didn't get free'd up on my drive.

I've tried re-mounting the drive, and restarting my computer, etc. Nothing seems to work.

Anyone know a way I can deal with this??

Thanks

 

[satcomer]

Don't worry. When a remote drive is mounted in OS x and you delete a file on that drive in will not appear in your OS X Trash Can. It will be immediately delete on that mounted external networked drive.

 

[Dave Braine]

I think that the OP is referring to a standard external drive, in which case deleted items appear in the Trash. In Snow Leopard anyway, don't know about Lion.

 

[SpetsnaZ99]

The 'Trash' is a temporary location. If you move items from an external drive to the trash, the trash will appear full. If you then unmount the external drive the trash will change to empty. If you then re-mount the external drive the trashed items will re-appear in the trash. You need to empty the 'Trash' while the external drive is mounted in order to delete them properly.
If this is not happening for you, try checking disk permissions.

Go to ->
/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility

Select the external drive and click 'Repair disk permissions'

 

[Bengws]

Hey SpetsnaZ99,

I have emptied the trash, and the space on my drive still doesn't free up even though the items have been permanently deleted.

I've tried going to Disk Utility, but I am not able to repair disk permissions on it (option is not clickable).

I am running an NTFS mounter as my drive is formatted as a so. Disk Utility displays that I have read/write permissions on the disk:

Disk Description :Seagate FreeAgent Go Media
Connection Bus :USB
Write Status :Read/Write
Connection Type :External
S.M.A.R.T. Status :Not Supported

However, I am not able to perform ANY first-aid on the disk for some odd reason. Should I try a different NTFS mounter (this one is just a free one off the internet)??

Should I try "Erase Free Space" ?? Would that help at all?

Feeling kinda confused at the moment lol.

Thanks for your help

 

[SpetsnaZ99]

Hi Bengws, sorry for late reply.

This might help, and its free:-

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

 

[Bengws]

Awesome - thx! I'll give that a try

 

[GS Owner]

I hope it works; I'm deleting old Archive files from last year. I've been using CleanMyMac for the most part. For normal usage it's one of the best utilities I've ever bought.

I'm junking nearly 100GB of old and obsolete files. I started Friday afternoon and it's still deleting and deleting. There has to be a better way.

Gonna try it.

 

[GGJstudios]

I hope it works; I'm deleting old Archive files from last year. I've been using CleanMyMac for the most part.

I would not recommend CleanMyMac, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​