help, can't empty my trash folder on external hdd

Question

I've been searching for this problem on the webs but none of the solutions i've found worked for me. The problem is that I have an external hard drive and the trash folder won't delete.

the complete path of the problem folder:

/media/Elements/.. .Trash-1000/expunged/2969272896

For some reason if i just press delete when that folder is selected it delete's as a normal folder, but it will always reappear. Deleting the folder in windows won't work either.

There are no files in the folder.

Solution

If the trash has nothing else important in it:

rm -rf /media/Elements/.Trash-1000/

You may want to try as root as well:

sudo rm -rf /media/Elements/.Trash-1000/

Another method would be to use srm - it would wipe over the data and remove it. It also shows if it is a hardlink etc.

If you need to install it:

 sudo apt-get install secure-delete

and then

srm -rf /media/Elements/.Trash-1000/

Comments

[Rmano]

please add (from terminal) the result of the command ls -ld applied to every component of the path... like ls -ld /media/Elements/.Trash-1000/expunged/2969272896, ls -ld /media/Elements/.Trash-1000/expunged/ etc.