Macbook Pro - Yosemite OSX - Trash Won't Empty?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi there, I think I’m set up wrong and hope someone can help me.

I have a newer macbook pro set up with Yosemite OSX, I’m running a My Passport Ultra 1TB external drive.

It is running fine.

When I plug the external drive in, the trash on my mac will show that it has items in it.  When I try to empty the trash I get this message:

“The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.”

There are some 8K items in the trash from my external drive, what do I need to change to be able to empty the trash?

Thanks.

ps, if I unplug the drive the trash on my mac shows as being empty, so I’m sure the files are from the drive.

2

Hello there, welcome to the community.

I would run a test using first aid on the mac then use the “fix permission” options and see if this fix the problem.

3

Thanks for the reply. 

Can you please give me a little detail on how to execute both?  I’m not familiar with either of those things.

eta, I have run scans on the drive and they come up fine.

permissions are set to “read and write”

the format is set up as MS-DOS (FAT32)

4

you can try a “secure empty”  of the trash…

to do this hold “command” and “control” keys when clicking on the trash. (it might ask for a password once you select this option)

if that fails. try repairing disk permissions by opening disk utility, selecting the external HDD then going to the “first aid” tab then clicking the "repair disk permissions button.

if neither of these work there are more drastic options available, but they require terminal (console) commands.