Can't do anything with external hard drive, “.Trashes” is probably the boogyman

Question

I bought an external Samsung hard drive today. But I'm not able to do anything with it. Here are the problems I'm having:

• I can't put anything on the hard drive. Finder gets stuck at 'preparing copying files'
• I can delete anything on the hard drive system files, except the folder ".Trashes". It gives error 'Unexpected error: -50'
• I tried to empty the trash can, but nothing changes.
• I set the file permission on the .Trashes to read/write everyone, doesn't change a thing
• Trying to format the whole drive with Disk Utility, but quits at start, because the drive cannot be deactivated.

I've tried a few terminal commands

sudo -s -r rf /Volumes/Untitled\ 1/.Trashes` //Directory not empty  
-r rf /Volumes/Untitled\ 1/.Trashes` //No permissions

Also

cd /Volumes ls -al cd name_of_partition ls -al
rm -rf .Trashes

Again: Permission error.

Also:

• I can't change drive permissions via Disk Utility, via the button 'recover drive permissions', because it is 'blank'

One thing that really bothers me: I really want to format the partition, but every time it says 'Disk cannot be deactivated', when trying to recover, wipe or format.

I really can't figure out how to delete .Trashes, format the drive or get the damn thing working.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I had the same problem today. After trying everything sudo I could do under the sun, manually trying to remove the .Trashes file through finder, etc I wound up just reformatting the drive.

The reformat took significantly less time than me trying to figure out how to get the drive empty. Probably better for the drive, anyway.