Disc space on external hd vanishes

Hi all,
any help on the two following problems is greatly appreciated:
I have a MBP (Leopard) to which I periodically connect various external USB-harddrives for backups, photo-editing, etc. I keep having two issues that I haven't been able to resolve by searching the forum and the web:
1) Two of the hds are small pocket USB-drives (Western Digital 320 GB, Medion 160 GB) which are formatted in FAT32. To my knowledge, I should be able to read and write, as well as delete, with the disc adjusting the available space. Unfortunately, the drive will not render previously occupied disc space. I.e. when I copy a 40 GB photo-folder from my internal HD to the external 320 GB one, and afterwards delete it, the disc space is still indicated as used in the info-tab, and the available disc space is still down to 280 GB. I've come as far as to not having enough disc space for my needs, but also don't have enough space available on either hd to back everything up on one and reformat. I am, however, not convinced anyway that this would solve the problem as the discs were formatted using my own MBP the first time around as well! Also, it seems to be a systematic error, because it's happening to both drives (they're both fairly new, < than 1 year old).
2) My third external hd poses another problem, which might be easily solved: In this case, the drive is a bit older (but still works fine) and was previously used with a WIN-laptop - it is therefore still formatted in NTFS. In order to be able to also write on it using my MBP, I downloaded this program:
<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/catacombae/NTFS-3G_20 09.4.4-catacombae.dmg
It resolved the problem immediately after the install, however, a today (a day later, after having had the MBP shut down and restarted) it is not working anymore. Even after installing the software again, no success.
Any ideas or suggestions? I will be a MUCH happier person if I can get all my back-ups done very soon, so PLEASE help
Thanks a bunch!!

Hi neuroanatomist,
many thanks for the swift reply - I did as you said and was in fact able to free up the missing disc space, big YAY!
I do have a quick follow up question though, if I may:
I simply went ahead and emptied my trash whilst having the two external USB-drives connected (as you suggested). If I wanted to, however, for whatever reason not delete my MBP-trash, is there any other way to get rid of the invisible .Trashes folder (or empty it, if that's the more practical/desirable solution)? I have to admit that I wasn't even able to find/see the folder, because I do not know how to make invisible folders visible in this case...
As for the commercial software: I will give it a try if I have not figured out another way by the end of the week. So if anyone else has a suggestion as to how I could solve the problem without spending any money, I'd still be grateful for a quick shout.
Again, thank you neuroanatomist!! (EDIT: ....and JoeyR, of course :))
Message was edited by: buckykatt02

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