Thumb drive emptying not working

[macswitcha2]

I wanted to put something on thumb drive to transfer over to my other mac but it was too big for it so I made space by transferring some of the files on to my mac. I ended up emptying out my thumb drive to make room. So I had to delete the files on my thumb drive once I moved the files to my mac since moving them basically just makes copies. However, my empty thumb drive still reads as if nothing was ever removed. I have a empty 4GB thumb drive that says I only have 1 plus GB left?

Can someone explain this?

 

[Intell]

You need to plug the drive into both Macs and on both Macs you need to Empty the Trash. It'll free up the missing space on the drive.

 

[rkmac]

If you just deleted the items from the stick, you also have to remove them from the trash
Took me a while to firgure this out when I first got my mac, because the OS keeps a hidden folder called .Trash in the folder from where things were deleted which keeps them there instead of in the trash can.
Just right click the trash icon in your dock and then click "Empty Trash".
Just a warning though, this will clear everything in the trash. Make sure there is nothing in there that you actually need.

 

[macswitcha2]

If you just deleted the items from the stick, you also have to remove them from the trash
Took me a while to firgure this out when I first got my mac, because the OS keeps a hidden folder called .Trash in the folder from where things were deleted which keeps them there instead of in the trash can.
Just right click the trash icon in your dock and then click "Empty Trash".
Just a warning though, this will clear everything in the trash. Make sure there is nothing in there that you actually need.

I forgot to mention that when I emptied the Thumb Drive, I check trash and nothing was in the trash. So this is what's strange. I emptied out the thumb drive yet it's still reads as if nothing was ever deleted and the trash reads as if nothing was ever put in yet my Thumb Drive is empty.

 

[rkmac]

I forgot to mention that when I emptied the Thumb Drive, I check trash and nothing was in the trash. So this is what's strange. I emptied out the thumb drive yet it's still reads as if nothing was ever deleted and the trash reads as if nothing was ever put in yet my Thumb Drive is empty.

Okaaay....
Go to the Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)
Select the thumb drive on the left, selecting the partition (i.e. not the Drive itself, but the thing indented a bit, the partition on the drive)
On the right, select the Erase tab, then input the name you want for the drive then click Erase.
Wait for the progress bar to complete, then viola, it should be empty.

 

[macswitcha2]

Okaaay....
Go to the Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)
Select the thumb drive on the left, selecting the partition (i.e. not the Drive itself, but the thing indented a bit, the partition on the drive)
On the right, select the Erase tab, then input the name you want for the drive then click Erase.
Wait for the progress bar to complete, then viola, it should be empty.

Done! Thanks! However, I chose mac journal. is that ok? should I format it different?

 

[rkmac]

Done! Thanks! However, I chose mac journal. is that ok? should I format it different?

It will only be writable on a mac now (I think, not 100% certain), probably choose FAT.