Removable devices - files not deleting

[NotAGolf]

Hi all.

I've got a bit of a problem. The last couple of weeks I've had issues where files were not being deleted correctly off my usb devices. One of them being my external hard drive, the other being my sansa clip mp3 player.

First off, my usb hard drive. I wanted to clear stuff off so I just went into the folder and deleted stuff. The files were gone but my free space stayed the same. After a little bit of hunting around I found a hidden folder called trashes that contained all the data. Deleting it from here got rid of it and freed up the space. Is it normal to delete stuff into here? It's just like a recycle bin I guess.

Second one was more tricky. I deleted files from my mp3 player in the same way. Exploring the drive in windows suggested there was no files on there, yet there was no free space again. If I plugged the device and looked through the tracks, the one's I deleted were still on there. I couldn't find a similar trashes fiolder on here and in the end I had to format the drive to get rid of the old music.

Any ideas what's going on here?

 

[ejr22]

What are the specs of your PC and what OS are you using?

 

[NotAGolf]

Corr I've had it for years! This is going to be a push to remember...

Core2Duo E6420
2GB Ram
Can't remember the mobo (i'm at work so can't look). I know it's an asus .
Western Digital 250GB main.
Western Digital Green 1TB storage.
OCZ ModStram 450W.

Not sure of the exact model of external hard drive but it's a 320GB Western Digital. Mp3 player is a Sansa Clip+ 8GB.

Dual booting windows xp and ubuntu 9.10. This occured while using xp, haven't tried in ubuntu.

Thanks.