Cannot delete files on My Passport Ultra

WD External and Portable SSD Portable SSD
1

I have a My Passport Ultra, using a Lenovo with Windows 7. I’m not using the WD software to do automatic backups – I’m doing them manually whenever I want to, dragging folders from the PC to the external drive. That kind of transfer seems to be working great.

As the disk fills up, I want to delete older backups (also manually, by right clicking “delete” in windows explorer and having the file disappear, like it’s supposed to). This doesn’t work. I right click delete, Windows asks me if I want to permanently delete the file, I say yes, and nothing happens. No error message, no action after a delay – nothing. When I try to delete subfolders within the larger backup folder, that also does not work.

What’s going on here? The entire external drive is password protected, but I’m already inside looking at the files when the delete failure occurs. Nothing is asking me for a password here.

All help is appreciated. Thanks.

2

This is an unusual behavior. Particularly so if you can still add files, which means you still have write permissions.

What happens if you try to delete files from a different computer? It could be an indexing problem related to Windows trying to send files into the recycle bin rather than outright deleting them.