How to Empty Trash on External Hard Drive

I'm using an external hard drive for Time Machine. I used it for my old laptop's backup and have transferred all needed files, app, and such to my new computer.  I want to trash everything from the old backups so I have room for the new ones.  I moved everything to the trash and clicked on Empty Securely.  A message pops up saying "There are some locked items in the Trash. Do you want to remove all the items, including the locked ones, or just the unlocked items?"  My choices are Cancel, Remove Unlocked Items, and Remove All Items.  I chose the last one and it appeared to start to empty over 400,000 items but with no other actions or messages, it stopped.  I tried it again using the second option and got the same results.  I ejected and re-mounted the external drive and tried it several more times with the same results each time.  Why won't the trash empty?!?!?

Unless you have other data on the volume, the best option is to erase it in Disk Utility. Don't do this unless you have at least one other complete backup, which you should have anyway.

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