Insufficient Disk Space

Insufficient Disk Space

Recently, you purchased a USB flash drive that you plan to use to store personal files. When you attempt to store a file on the USB flash drive, the computer displays an error message indicating that the file will not fit. How could a brand new USB flash drive not have enough room to store the first file you attempted to store on it?

Just like a normal hard disk drive, when you delete a file on a flash drive it isn’t automatically deleted out of the flash storage. On a hard disk drive, when files are deleted they go to a waiting area from which they can be retrieved. When you empty the recycle bin or trash, it will delete the data from the drive to be written over later. 

It’s the same way with a flash drive. When you delete something from the flash drive, it goes to the “.Trashes” folder to sit there until it is permanently deleted. They aren’t completely deleted initially, just in case the user deleted them by mistake. 

So, if your flash drive is full of data and you delete most of it, it will still be on there in the “.Trashes” folder. No space will have been recovered. If you access that folder, you can restore your files but you can't delete them. They have already been trashed and can’t be trashed again. 

The only way to free up space on your flash drive is to empty the recycling bin or trash on the host computer. When the host computer empties its files it will also empty the files on the USB drive.

Sources Retrieved from:

https://www.angieslist.com/articles/why-doesnt-my-flash-drive-have-any-free-space.htm