Delete old back ups

Using My Passport for Mac Mid 2011 with Time Machine. Mac has High Sierra version 10.13.6
Old file in my Mac trash bin but get error saying
The operation can’t be completed because the item “Macintosh HD” is in use.

click on info and tells me it is from passport how do I get this removed from trash and delete other old backups in order to free up space on passport

Hello fb52,

You can try to run test on the drive using WD Drive Utilities to check the health of the drive and also check if any open file from the drive might be preventing this operation to complete.

Ran test thru utilities all is good. How do I check for open files in the drive and if one is open how do I close