External drive - empty trash issue.

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chmjr1965's picture
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External drive - empty trash issue.

Not sure if this is where this post belongs, and if it's in the wrong place, I apologize in advance.

Have a Maxtor external drive, PowerBook G4 1.33. Cannot delete two files, says that the items are in use. This all came about after a power outage here during a storm... Have tried to use DiskWarrior 4.0 and to no avail. Cannot force empty, again, files in use. Would appreciate any assistance with this. I am NOT Terminal savvy, but not afraid of it. Additionally, running 10.4.11 and again, the problem is only with the external drive. Not a hardware failure to the best of my knowledge...

Thanks,
Chaz

chmjr1965's picture
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Re: External drive - empty trash issue.

Not sure if this is where this post belongs, and if it's in the wrong place, I apologize in advance.

Have a Maxtor external drive, PowerBook G4 1.33. Cannot delete two files, says that the items are in use. This all came about after a power outage here during a storm... Have tried to use DiskWarrior 4.0 and to no avail. Cannot force empty, again, files in use. Would appreciate any assistance with this. I am NOT Terminal savvy, but not afraid of it. Additionally, running 10.4.11 and again, the problem is only with the external drive. Not a hardware failure to the best of my knowledge...Also, I cannot delete the .trash on the external drive where I am also having the same problem.

Thanks,
Chaz

coius's picture
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Leopard Cache Cleaner. Use the demo

download the demo of this program:
http://www.northernsoftworks.com/leopardcachecleaner.html

Somewhere in the menu is the ability to force empty the trash. I own the program and it works great. Also, if you find it helpful, buy it. It's not expensive and is really good (I bought my copy about 5 months back and I still use it).

The demo should do the force-empty though.
That should fix your issue Smile

chmjr1965's picture
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Re: Leopard Cache Cleaner. Use the demo

download the demo of this program:
http://www.northernsoftworks.com/leopardcachecleaner.html

Somewhere in the menu is the ability to force empty the trash. I own the program and it works great. Also, if you find it helpful, buy it. It's not expensive and is really good (I bought my copy about 5 months back and I still use it).

The demo should do the force-empty though.
That should fix your issue :)

I gave it try and appreciate the info! Now, I have an issue where the drive does NOT appear on the desktop. As you might have guessed, this 200GB drive IS my backup and I have to have the data on this on baby. So, tried DiskWarrior and the drive appears there, but it tells me that there is a disk malfunction: 2 and the final "rebuild" button does not appear (my only option is to cancel).

At this point, I just need to get my critical data and a, willing to try just about anything!

Thanks!!

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try using DW's "scavenge" feature

It sure looks like your drive's directories and records are hosed.

Once you've launched DW, hold the option key and you'll see the "Rebuild" button now is a "Rebuild..." button. Click, then check the "scavenge" check box and proceed.

Of course, you need gigs of extra space to hold all your scavenged data, another big external drive would be best.

I'd do this before running another utility such as Disk Utility, other activities will almost surely overwrite or lose existing files.

dan k

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External Drive - tried DW 4.0 Scavenge...

Dan K,

Thanks for the instructions; tired it "DiskWarrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named "MaxEx." The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction."

Disk shows up with Disk Utility - just can't mount it.

Thoughts??

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