Cannot Delete Files From a Flash Drive

I let a friend of mine borrow my flash drive so that he could do some type of system recovery or something on his microsoft surface tablet. He gave it back to me so I could use it for something I need to do, but he did not delete any of the recovery files, so I currently do not have enough memory to use it for what I need it for. I tried deleting the items and everytime I receive an error message and I cannot delete them. If any one has any ideas of what I can do to fix this I'd really appreciate it. I right clicked and went to get info to check the permissions and it said read and write was enabled so I'm not sure what else to do.

Sweet...that totally worked. Thank you!

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I have a relatively new Macbook Pro Retina 15" and have a Western Digital 1 TB Passport. I've been using the passport for about a year now without any problems on older Macbooks in my house. I used to be able to read and write to this drive no problem. I am using the Paragon NTFS for Mac software in order to read and write to the NTFS drive. When I navigate through the drive in Finder, if I try to create a new folder, I do not have a problem. If I try to delete that folder I just created, I get this error:
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(Error code -36)
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Thanx for such qucik reply!!! The pages were great, it had an answer for my problem, but unfortunately it also involved me dealing with it only on the MacIntosh HD itself, not on mounted external drive I suppose... So it didn't work they say that there is an icon in the left corner indicating locked folder - I don't see any icon on it. It says you can untick the box to unlock the folder - there is no tick to be unticked. Finally, they say that if I don't have permition or rights I cannot delete it. But how do i change permittion which already says that i can read and write in it? So everything appears to be normal only I cannot delete it. there is not even any warnig telling me I don't have enough rights, it just requires the password and after me typing it in it makes the sound of scraping paper but does nothing more. I aslo had some problems with emptying Trash after being seemingly succesful with one file and had got so far to have them appear in the Trash (no clue how this one actully got there though..) I followd the advice and emptied the Trash with Terminal. The Folder is still there but it shows 0 Kb... So far so good BUT: It is still on the external drive, so I obviously only managed to copy it into the Trash!!! Phew, innit a bit too tight to poor owners, this macbook?? I want my rights back!

Installed OS X Snow Leopard on external HDD, now won't allow me to delete files from Mac internal drive

Hi,
I am stuck! My 1 TB iMac 27" decided to stop booting up and would only stay at the grey screen with the apple, gear turning and progress bar. When it got to a certain point on the progress bar it would shut down. Thanks to so many helpful people and their experiences I was able to try many different things including (Command + S, typing /sbin/mount -uw / enter , chmod 775 / enter, logout enter, then rebooting holding down Command + V) and (Reinstalling OS X and using Disk Utility to repair - came up with Disk can't be fixed).
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My problem is that I cannot delete files from Macintosh HD, and I've tried to unlock files/folders but they don't seem to be locked. But when I drag them to the trash can it says "The item ... can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted." Again, many helpful answers online, but nothing is working. I have 2 Finder windows open, one with external HDD (new startup disk), and old HDD (Macintosh HD) but all items in Macintosh HD can't be altered or deleted (right click doesn't highlight to change the name). So if I can't delete my files, I can't reinstall OS X and repair disk and select it as my startup disk. I'd be so thrilled if someone can help me. I have tried unlocking folders, and I downloaded 'Trashit'. Neither worked, so I figure because it has the little pencil crossed out on the menu bar that it is protected somehow...I just don't know how/what to do. Thanks

Ok, so I'll try set it out a bit clearer than my first post,
This is what I've done, and the results:
1. My son unplugged working iMac Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2, 1TB with only 11GB available space
2. Turned it on and got the white screen, apple, turning gear and load-up bar
3. Turned Mac off and waited 1/2 a minute.
4. Turned Mac back on...(same as 3.), tried again many times
5. Began searching internet for answers (see original post)
6. Found answers and did the following:
               1.     Put OS X installation disk into drive
               2.     Attached External Hard Drive
               3.     Installed OS X onto External Hard Drive (With a different name & password to original HDD)
               4.     Found Macintosh HD still worked so tried to delete files only to get message saying                                           files couldn't be deleted (see original post)
I've tried changing the permissions in 'Get Info' and this is what happens:
1.Right click Macintosh HD - says "You can only read"
                                                  Name: System - Read & Write
                                                             Admin -   Read & Write
                                                             Everyone - Read only
2.Click on padlock to unlock - doesn't turn black to be able to change anything
3.Check the box "Ignore ownership on this volume" (someone else advised to do this)
4.Name changes to 'mydrive (Me)'
5.Lock padlock and Name still says mydrive (Me) but still 'You can only read'
I don't know what is wrong or what to do, but perhaps you are right LowLuster, that because I named them different names it is protected in some way.
My thought now is to copy all my files to the external HDD and then erase and install again on my internal HD, but I really need my calendar, emails etc from my old HD and not sure they can be found on the old HD to copy over.
Still stuck!

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Can't delete files from external hard drive

So here's an interesting problem that I've never run across. I have a Western Digital hard drive plugged in and I was deleting some files off it today when suddenly it started saying that there were some files in use and it couldn't delete those. I hit "Continue" which usually does the trick but it just deleted everything else and left a bunch of folders with these weird empty files in them. So I quit all programs and tried again. Same thing, "Cannot delete, file in use." Tried rebooting both my computer and the external, again "Files in use." Did a google search, followed numerous suggestions, terminal sudo rm -r +file name, a force delete app, secure delete, holding down the option button while deleting... No dice. When I try the sudo rm thing in terminal it tells me that the folder doesn't exist AND that it isn't empty and won't delete it. (I love computers) When I do a right click->Get info on it, it says that I have read-write permissions but that the files are locked but won't let me unlock them (I'm the system administrator). When I look at the files in finder, it says they're actually aliases. What's really weird is that the file names are all messed up and have asian characters and stuff in them. I didn't create these aliases or have files with those characters in them. Soooo... Any suggestions? Cause I've read the threads and tried just about everything. I'm concerned this drive is headed for a crash or maybe just needs to be wiped and then put my stuff back on cause it's gotten errors over time. I don't know, I've never had this happen before and I'm pretty good with computers. If it was a windows computer I'd be doing a scan disk and defrag on it but I don't know how to do that on a mac to an external hard drive. I honestly don't know if this is a hardware or software problem. Any help would be appreciated.

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Volume repair reported:
Verify and Repair volume “750GBEXT”
** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
/.../SpryAssets/_NOTES has entries after end of directory
Truncate? yes
/..../My Work has entries after end of directory
Truncate? yes
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95906 files, 181003968 KiB free (5656374 clusters)
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
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Can't delete file from external hard drive

Hi,
There is a permition problem with my external hard drive (no time mashine on it!) - can't delete certain files.
I copied my documents on my external hard drive from previous computer with windows and later with linux system on it and there had been changed icons at certain folders previously. I mention this, becouse what linux did was that it locked the changed icon files and I couldn't delete them until I unlocked them manually. But at least it showed me that i don't have permition and i could change it. Well, now I mounted the disk on my new macbook and wanted to delete some files and it seems that there is the same problem with permition, at least it seems to happen with the same files. When I want to delete them, the system asks me for admin password, I give it allright, it makes the sound as if the folder was moved to trash but that's all. the folder is still there even after dismounting and restarting. I already checked the permitions and it says in the info that i can read and write with the file so it looks as if my rights were ok...
Please help, I desperatly need more space for new backup and can't get rid of the files I don't need any more...
Thank you for any sort of simple-ish advice
Message was edited by: brevon

Thanx for such qucik reply!!! The pages were great, it had an answer for my problem, but unfortunately it also involved me dealing with it only on the MacIntosh HD itself, not on mounted external drive I suppose... So it didn't work they say that there is an icon in the left corner indicating locked folder - I don't see any icon on it. It says you can untick the box to unlock the folder - there is no tick to be unticked. Finally, they say that if I don't have permition or rights I cannot delete it. But how do i change permittion which already says that i can read and write in it? So everything appears to be normal only I cannot delete it. there is not even any warnig telling me I don't have enough rights, it just requires the password and after me typing it in it makes the sound of scraping paper but does nothing more. I aslo had some problems with emptying Trash after being seemingly succesful with one file and had got so far to have them appear in the Trash (no clue how this one actully got there though..) I followd the advice and emptied the Trash with Terminal. The Folder is still there but it shows 0 Kb... So far so good BUT: It is still on the external drive, so I obviously only managed to copy it into the Trash!!! Phew, innit a bit too tight to poor owners, this macbook?? I want my rights back!

Cannot Delete Files From a Flash Drive

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