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When I connect my external hard disk to my Ubuntu device and delete some files and folders from it, they are not actually deleted as they still preserve space but I do not see them.

However, when I connect the hard disk to a Windows machine, I see a folder .Trash-1000 contains some files and folders, and when I delete them from there, I get the space freed.

1) How can I delete my files and folders from the external hard disk to the rubbish bin and free their space in Ubuntu?

2) How can I see the .Trash-1000 folder in the external hard disk from my Ubuntu machine?

user9371654
  • 587

2 Answers2

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Files beginning with "." are hidden in Linux. To see them in Nautilus, click the drop-down menu in the top right and click "show hidden". Alternatively from the command line, use ls and the -a option, which will show all files hidden or otherwise. Windows does not share this feature, which is why it shows up by default there.

Much like Windows' recycle bin, Ubuntu does not "delete" files when you delete them, instead it moves them to a buffer folder (.Trash) and if the space is needed, only then will the files be deleted. This gets them out of your way immediately, but saves you the potential nightmare of deleting a file you didn't intend to. Note that using the rm command bypasses this; anything you delete with this is immediately "deleted" (still not truly deleted, but you can't get it back easily)

Unlike Windows, however, the "trash" functionality in Ubuntu is not limited to the operating system drive. Any volume you mount has it's own trash bin, whereas with Windows the recycle bin only exists on your C:\ drive. Deleting an item from an external/non-system hard drive in windows is the same as using the rm command in Linux unless otherwise configured.

Minty
  • 1,208
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How can I delete my files and folders from the external hard disk to the rubbish bin and free their space in Ubuntu?

select the file(s) then ShiftDelete will remove the files permanently without moving them to the rubbish bin.

graham
  • 10,436