Recovering Drive Space after files have been deleted

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

I have a 2TB external HD. My book Essential.

Had 1.5TB free space left.

Deleted about 200GB of stuff off as it was no longer needed.

Hard drive is still only showing 1.5TB of free space left even though I deleted over 200GB of stuff off.

How do I get that space back to free space.

Without losing the rest of the data on the Harddrive?

2

Did you delete stuff from the recycle bin too?

Joe

3

yes.

Delete out of recycle bin using clean my mac. 

disconnected the external drive.

REstarted computer.

Plugged drive back in and the space on drive was still not recovered.

4

Do you still have those files in the recycle bin? If so, deleted them from the bin too. You should see the space now.

5

What OS do you have? Unless you’re on SL or Lion then you won’t even see 2TB out of the box to begin with…