Thumb Drive - Where is my space going?

[claimed4all]

I have 2 thumb drives. I believe one if formatted Fat32 and the other specifically for the mac. When I delete files from them the available space does not increase, the only way to get the memory back is to format them. If I check the info it still shows space used after I delete every file, and not a little used space it shows the amount of space before I delete anything. How do I fix this without reformatting whenever I need more space?

 

[xUKHCx]

When you delete something off the thumb drive the file is moved to the Trash (which is a hidden folder on your thumb drive). To gain the space back you have to empty the trash, which totally removes it from the thumb drive.

To do this you can right click the trash icon in the dock and choose empty trash, or press cmd+shift+backspace. It is worth noting that when you do this it will delete the files off your thumb drive and whatever is in the trash on your computer as well. So it is worth checking if there is anything valuable in it before emptying.

 

[claimed4all]

That did it, Thanks.

I knew of the trash folder, just never knew I had to empty the trash to recover the space.

 

[riverteeth]

I've seen a cool looking automator script for emptying just the .trashes from your flash drive, thereby leaving the trashed items from you computer alone, but I can't seem to find it anymore. If anyone knows about this script and where to get it, I'd really like to try it out!

 

[claimed4all]

Don't know where to find it, but I like the idea of that.