Tag Archives: external hard drive

External Hard Drive Not Deleting Files

external hard driveI recently had the problem where my external back up drive was nearly full so I deleted a bunch of files off it. However, even after deleting these files no more space seemed to become available on the external hard drive.

Why No More Space?

I couldn’t figure out why I was not getting any more space on the drive even after deleting the files. I was planning on buying a new hard drive at some point anyway but I knew that there were files on the hard drive that I didn’t really need so I might as well delete those first.

Recycle Bin

I searched around for a recycle bin on the hard drive to empty to make the space but there didn’t seem to be one.

Anyway, after a bit of searching, I realised that all of the files that I had deleted were in the Recycle Bin on my PC. This actually took a bit of finding in itself as the recycle bin now does not show in Windows Explorer which was what I was used to and how I used to find it!

(If you also can’t find the recycle bin then check for a link on your desktop and it is probably accessible from there).

Yay, Free Space!

So, once I deleted the files from my recycle bin on my PC the space did indeed get freed up on my external hard drive.

Hopefully this will help someone else who might be in the same situation!