Annoyed USB flash drive problem, please help!

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Maxwell690

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I recently bought a 256mb USB flash drive to help me transfer files between my pc at work and my mac at home. Yesterday I tried to free up some space on the flash drive as it was nearly full and I wanted to transfer some files onto it. I kept deleting files of the memory stick, they'd disappear but no new space appeared on the memory stick. Unable to get the files I wanted onto the flash drive I had to burn a cd.

I came into work today and plugged the USB flash drive into my pc and there was a file called .Trashes that was over 100Mb in size. This contained all the files that I had deleted the night before. I proceeded to delete this file and the space appeared as it should have.

What am I doing wrong? How do I create space on my flash drive on my Mac without the .Trashes file being created or at least deleted when something else is trying to be written to the space.

Thanks in advance for any replies, they are much appreciated.

Max
 
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If you delete something on your drive, you need to empty your trash can on the mac for it to free up the space.

Just ctrl-click your trash in the dock when your flash drive is open in finder and select empty trash.
 
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Maxwell690

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Aptmunich said:
If you delete something on your drive, you need to empty your trash can on the mac for it to free up the space.

Just ctrl-click your trash in the dock when your flash drive is open in finder and select empty trash.

Even if its from an external source, not the hard drive?
 
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Yep: OS X keeps a separate trash file for each connected drive: If you use OS X to delete stuff on your flash drive, it doesn't copy everything into your harddrive's trash, it places it into the flash drive's trash.

That's the hidden .trash file you saw. You can empty the flash drives trash by selecting it in the finder and then selecting empty trash from the Finder menu. (or hit Shift+Command+Backspace).
 
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Maxwell690

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Aptmunich said:
Yep: OS X keeps a separate trash file for each connected drive: If you use OS X to delete stuff on your flash drive, it doesn't copy everything into your harddrive's trash, it places it into the flash drive's trash.

That's the hidden .trash file you saw. You can empty the flash drives trash by selecting it in the finder and then selecting empty trash from the Finder menu. (or hit Shift+Command+Backspace).

Seems a bit of a wierd way to have to do it, but cheers for the advice!
 
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Is there any way for the Mac not to create this .Trash folder for external drives?
 

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not likely. but i'm guessing that if you do work with the drive on a windows machine you could set the properties of .trashes to hidden in windows.
 
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This happened to me too, i never posted about it here but i should have i got so mad i was like screaming at the computer because i never thought to empty the trash lol.
 
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...That's the hidden .trash file you saw. You can empty the flash drives trash by selecting it in the finder and then selecting empty trash from the Finder menu. (or hit Shift+Command+Backspace).

I tried this but my Mac empty first the HD Trash. Is there a way to empty just the Trash in the flash drive?

N!
 
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If you want to directly empty the usb stick, you can open Terminal and type

cd /Volumes/<name_of_your_flash_drive>/
sudo rm -r .Trashes

You may or may not need to use sudo, but it doesn't hurt

To get a list of all the hidden files on that drive (or any other) you can type

ls -al

and you should see the files there

Cheers
 
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chas_m

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I don't understand why everyone is suggesting these incredibly complex ways of doing a simple task. Has Mac-Forum been taken over by Windows or something?

With the USB drive still mounted, empty the trash. That's it. Simple. Done.
 

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"incredibly complex ways of doing a simple task" = OSX?

I don't understand why everyone is suggesting these incredibly complex ways of doing a simple task. Has Mac-Forum been taken over by Windows or something?

With the USB drive still mounted, empty the trash. That's it. Simple. Done.

It looks like many mac users are the same as windows users!! sad,sad.. why to use an unnecessary feature when it just disturbs every day.. yes.. because "you just have to click"..
NO!! I do not want to click every time.
I have to admit even windows is better in this - there you CAN configure if you want to use this service or not. That is SIMPLE!

Not the OS should control the user!

P.S. when i want to delete a file on USB, then I need the space, and not just being bored.. and want to click x times just to make OSX happy, and finally have that free space. It is obvious many people DO NOT want to have trash on USB.
 

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You just replied to a dead thread years old with the last reply way over one year ago. I am going to close this.
 
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