Deleting Items from Flash Drives

I was always able to remove items in my flash drive until today. What could have gone wrong?

MiraMar111 said:

I was always able to remove items in my flash drive until today. What could have gone wrong?

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Hi Mira.... - do you believe that anyone can respond to this terse post?

Please provide more information: 1) What Mac/OS are you using?; 2) What USB flash drive is in question?; 3) What items are you trying to remove?; and 4) What error messages do you receive? Help us first - Dave

MiraMar111 said:

I was always able to remove items in my flash drive until today. What could have gone wrong?

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Does your flash drive have a read only switch? Some flash drives have this switch on them and if it's in the read only position, you will not be able to remove or delete items.

iMac, 20" OS X 10.8.5

Flash Drive…Memorex, 2GB. No switches.. just plug in and go!

I've had this flash drive for several years..no problem.
I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. Nothing has been the same since!

I don't receive any message when trying to delete items…they just won't delete.

MiraMar111 said:

iMac, 20" OS X 10.8.5

Flash Drive…Memorex, 2GB. No switches.. just plug in and go!

I've had this flash drive for several years..no problem.
I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. Nothing has been the same since!

I don't receive any message when trying to delete items…they just won't delete.

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Hi again - thanks for the additional information - I have several USB drives and neither have 'read-only' switches (more common w/ SD cards).

Does your drive mount in Finder and/or is it present in Disk Utility (DU) - if not, have you tried the drive in other USB slots on the same computer and also on another computer? Have you tried other USB drives on the computer in question? Just trying to determine if the drive is defective?

Now if you see the drive in Finder & DU, can you also see the contents in the Finder window? If so, you might want to check Preferences in DU to see if there are unchecked boxes there that may need to be 'ticked off' (see attached pic of my DU w/ Preferences opened & a Kingston USB drive mounted). Dave
.

Deleting Items from Flash Drive

I unplugged USB cord and then put it back in. Changed the Flash Drive's slot. Tried to delete something in it and it worked!!
Thank you so much!

MiraMar111 said:

I unplugged USB cord and then put it back in. Changed the Flash Drive's slot. Tried to delete something in it and it worked!!
Thank you so much!

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Well, congrats! Don't know if my advice helped but glad that you were able to use the flash drive - if not already done, you may want to get that data elsewhere as a backup and consider buying another drive (larger ones are pretty cheap now). Dave

ADDENDUM: I'm sure you already know this but make sure that when you plug in your USB drive(s), that on removal use the 'Eject' option for the drive before removing - if the drive is still actively transferring data and is 'pulled' at the wrong time, then may cause a problem.

Deleting Item from Flash Drives

RadDave said:

Well, congrats! Don't know if my advice helped but glad that you were able to use the flash drive - if not already done, you may want to get that data elsewhere as a backup and consider buying another drive (larger ones are pretty cheap now). Dave

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I don't understand anything about computers! What I know I had to learn through trial and error and kind people like you.
I know nothing about "drives."
All I found is that Macs are way too sensitive for people like me who are curious and have to learn on their own.

MiraMar111 said:

I don't understand anything about computers! What I know I had to learn through trial and error and kind people like you.
I know nothing about "drives."
All I found is that Macs are way too sensitive for people like me who are curious and have to learn on their own.

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I re-read my reply to you and realized that you meant Flash Drives.
Of course I'm familiar with them.
I shouldn't read and reply so quickly!

MiraMar111 said:

I re-read my reply to you and realized that you meant Flash Drives.
Of course I'm familiar with them.
I shouldn't read and reply so quickly!

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No problem at all - just let us known if your are OK now? Dave

raddave said:

no problem at all - just let us known if your are ok now? Dave

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a-ok!

MiraMar111 said:

All I found is that Macs are way too sensitive for people like me who are curious and have to learn on their own.

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If you find OS X difficult then try Windows 8. I used windows 7 and it was great but Windows 8 is a nightmare.
Keep coming back with any problems and I am sure the kind people on this forum will help you.