Data not being deleted

[di.late]

On my macbook pro I've been having difficulty deleting data off external devices (external drives, USB keys). What happens is, I will have a 100gb drive with 70gb of data on it, and I will delete 50gb of the data. The data will be deleted; I can't access it anymore, but instead of the drive having 80gb free, there will still only be 30gb free. My mac, for some reason still recognizes there to be data stored on the drive when in fact I deleted it. And if I try to put 40gb of data on the drive (since I should have 80gb free), the drive says that there is not enough room.

This happens on every external drive I own, and I am currently 2 days out of warranty (fml).

tl;dr when I delete data, the file is gone but the data is still stored on the drive and I can't remove it.

does anybody know what I can do?

ps. Hey, I'm new here

 

[McBie]

After you deleted the data, have you emptied the trash ( whilst the external drive is still connected )

Cheers ... McBie

 

[di.late]

After you deleted the data, have you emptied the trash ( whilst the external drive is still connected )

Cheers ... McBie

thanks, it did delete some of the data that I could account for, but I still have about 40gb of space taken up by nonexistent files.