I can't empty the trash from an external drive

I have a Seagate 2TB HD connected to a MBP running 10.6.8
The trash from the MBP will empty, but when I connect the Seagate the trash shows "Emptying the trash..." but will not empty. There are 116,232 items in trash. I have only 3.8 GB remaining on the Mac and am trying to clear space. Any suggestions?

You could try deleting the items via the command line.

cd /Volumes/2TB HD (or whatever yours is called)

cd .Trashes

sudo ls -la

enter password

rm -r <folder name> that was listed above there may be many, so delete whatever one your user owns as listed in the ls -la command above

Example:

Hostname:~ jsmith$ cd /Volumes/2TB*

Hostname:2TB HD jsmith$ cd .Trashes

Hostname:.Trashes dcram$ ls -la
ls -la: .: Permission denied

Hostname:.Trashes jsmith$ sudo ls -la
Password:
total 0
d-wx-wx-wt@ 3 root _unknown 102 Jul 29 19:05 .
drwxrwxr-x@ 45 _unknown _unknown 1598 Aug 11 19:07 ..
drwx------@ 2 jsmith staff 68 Aug 8 16:49 501

Hostname:.Trashes jsmith$ rm -r 501

It may take a few minutes for the rm -r command to finish and your terminal window may appear to hang during that time - be patient... you will eventually get a command prompt back and can then close the window.

Good luck.